Introducing myself and my journal

About Me:
I first learned about female empowerment by watching my mother, Judy, who raised my sister and me as a single parent. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Micronesia, worked as an emergency and public health nurse for many years and at age 40, decided to start a new career and put herself through law school. She reinvented herself again in her mid-fifties when she successfully ran for public office, winning a seat in the Oregon State Legislature.

I managed my mom's first two campaigns and worked on several others. I took a semester off from college to move to Little Rock for Bill Clinton's race in 1992 and served as Al Gore's state director for Rhode Island in 2000. I left politics to go to Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 2003 and have since written for various publications including Newsweek, Marie Claire and the San Francisco Chronicle.

My husband Curtis and I recently moved back to Portland, Oregon after spending ten years in New York, London and Cape Town. We welcomed our daughter, Beatrix, on Thanksgiving Day 2010.