She received an MFA from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2000. Before film school, she worked for eight years for various refugee and immigrant rights organizations, and her work focuses on social justice issues through the telling of personal stories. Los Trabajadores/The Workers (2001) documents the lives of immigrant day laborers, and Letters from the Other Side (2006) centers on the women and children left behind in Mexico. In her current film, Where Soldiers Come From, she returns to her hometown in far northern Michigan to follow a group of 20-year-olds before, during, and after their National Guard service in Afghanistan.