WHAT I'M PASSIONATE ABOUT...
DESIGN
As a child, I spent long hours after school sketching architectural and urban fantasies; as I got older, they became full-fledged buildings and proposed transit systems. Now, as a licensed architect, I hope to use my passion for design to change the way our human environments relate to the natural world through a framework I call Ecoempathy.
I am currently the Associate University Architect for Sustainability at Yale University, focused on integrating the University's sustainability goals across projects in close collaboration with the Office of Sustainability and other campus partners.
Previously, I served as the Sustainability Coordinator at Centerbrook Architects & Planners, where I developed firm-wide resources and processes for tracking sustainability metrics on every firm project. Alongside my sustainability leadership, I have served as a design architect on over a dozen projects of various scales, including Mill River Park Discovery Center and the New Canaan Library
I also design small projects through SpiraLworks, a design practice I founded in 2018 with Kas Semenov-Leiva
I teach courses on architectural ornament at Yale and University of Hartford.
+ NATURE
I gained a love and appreciation for nature at a young age, as I traveled around California's beautiful parks with my biologist parents. Today, I am lucky to call the beautiful Connecticut River Valley my home, a magical place I help to preserve through my work as part of the Connecticut River Gateway Commission.
I believe solving the world's pressing environmental crises must involve an experience of awe and wonder with nature. I have worked with the Student Conservation Association, the Earthwatch Institute, the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, and Naturebridge to study and raise awareness of nature.
I've always been a passionate and pragmatic environmentalist. During my college years, I served as co-President of Greening Princeton, and I continue to work on campus sustainability today. Read more here about the new recycling system we implemented at Princeton.
+ LANGUAGES
I love learning and studying languages, and I find translation to be a tough but rewarding challenge. Through my work with the late CK Williams and contemporary poet Dmitry Kuzmin, I've translated quite a few 20th century and contemporary Russian poets. Check out my Translations page for my latest work. My translations have been published in the St. Petersburg Review, the Big Bridge Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry, the Atlanta Review, Spolia, and Talisman Magazine. I also won honorable mention in the Compass Award Tarkovsky translation contest.
I've also recorded poetry for film soundtracks and am available for hire to recite poetry in Russian and English.
Some of my research has focused on linguistics and translation theory, culminating in several articles on the translation of address terms, which can be found on my Research Writing page.
