She has been practicing as an immigration attorney for nearly ten years. Prior to entering academia, she was a domestic violence and immigration attorney with the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center in Washington, DC. In Summer 2014, she travelled the Philippines to advise developing legal aid programs based at law schools in Muslim communities in Mindanao, as a volunteer with the International Senior Lawyer Project. She has an undergraduate background in Middle Eastern Studies and spent a year in Jordan on a Fulbright grant researching religious and cultural support for women’s participation in the workforce.