Bio

I was born at the Subic Bay Navy Hospital in the Philippines, on a day that would curse me like no other day ever could---Christmas Day! I shouldn't complain, my birthdays were filled with two-for-one-presents, Catholic nativities and midnight masses, and plenty of festive Christmas songs. Its left a mark. Being one of five kids, my mom (I was her favorite) said it great for the family that I was born on December 25th, it could ensure her a ticket into heaven once I went off to seminary school. Yes, that's what she wanted for me. The closest I got to that dream was spending every other Saturday and Sunday serving as an altar boy--fetching this and that during the mass, carrying the processional cross with a heavy bronze crucified Jesus on it, lighting candles, ringing bells. After three years of that, I went in the opposite direction.

My education in the arts was hellish in many ways--but I was a natural at drawing from observation, making functional and non-functional objects, and pretending to be a character on a stage. Theater was were I landed as I started to piece together my own future. I auditioned for the Arts High School, where I found my people! Creative young teens--we were outcast from all over the state of Minnesota to live and learn the arts--Theater, Dance, Music, Writing, Visual Arts, Photography, and Interdisciplinary Media. I was even an RA in the dorms my senior year. But good things have to end and I had had enough of the long rehearsals with teenage method actors who were their characters 24/7, Goth and Emo attitudes, and babysitting classmates tripping on acid. It was fun times, it was the 90's!

Of course since then my love for the arts has fueled and sustained me through being an art major at the University of Wisconsin--Madison to completing my MFA at Cal Arts, which was the school Walt Disney created in the hopes of training tallent to feed into is animation and media monsters. But the amazing hippies and vagabonds made the school something better than that--a truly avant garde sanctuary for experimental new work. The arts continue inspire me, motivating me to put my creativity in everything, and gave me the skills to make a lot of something from nothing. I love to design and make things, from paintings to all kinds of art objects, to pdf forms, handbooks, staff training manuals---in a way it's all kind of the same--an opportunity to be creative and collaborate. I think this my philosophy to the work I do, to bring creativity to our everyday.

This is all to say that I'll always bring my creative spark to the table.

Current Role at Stanford

SIS Residential Program Administrator
ITALIC | SLE

Here's the thing--I work in SIS to support the ITALIC and SLE programs. My work falls under administrative operations--a catch-all that covers everything from student course registration each quarter, coordinating charter busses for field trips around the Bay Area, ordering materials and supplies, verifying financial transactions, designing minor collateral materials and posters, events planning, updating web content. It is an a amazing job and the people I get to work with are brilliant and fascinating individuals.

Education & Certifications

  • High School Diploma, Minnesota Center for Arts Education (now called the Perpich Center for ARts Education), Theater performance and technology (1994)
  • BFA, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fine Arts (2000)
  • MFA, California Institute of the Arts, Fine Arts (2002)

Personal Interests

If you really want to know, I love learning about new things--I know everyone says this, but mine's got a shelf-life of two to three days give or take. Five days tops. Life is jam-packed full things that have to get done, so I'm happy to say that I'm old enough to know that I'm too old to get another specialized degree. I do not want what I haven't already got! And that's what's great about Stanford professional development classes--this week (8/16/2023) I took the intro to Chat GPT. Wow! Setting aside the practical parts of AI, forget about that, it was an insightful and horribly benign introduction the end of humanity. You can't go wrong with a course like that.

Other personal interest like downhill skiing in Aspen, scuba diving in Bali, grabbing a table for the best paella in Barcelona--traveling to exotic places is a lot if fun. But these things are not for me--no! Non! That stuff is too expensive. Give me the $10 World Market coupon in my inbox and let's go shoppin! To paraphrase designer Ilse Crawford, it doesn't have to be the most expensive thing, or the most popular thing, as long as you like it and it brings you joy.

Well being and community through a number of creative practices is for me a most appealing personal interest.