He has been a Fulbright Scholar, an H. F. Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Joint Center for Poverty Research in Chicago. His doctoral thesis, "Redeeming One's Self: How Reformed Ex-Offenders Make Sense of Their Lives," was awarded the Phi Delta Kappa Outstanding Dissertation Award for Northwestern University in 1998. He spends his free time with his daughter Zara and volunteering as a tutor in a local correctional facility