As an undergraduate, she majored in French and earned a license to teach it. Rather than become a French teacher, however, she joined the Peace Corps and spent three years in Sri Lanka teaching English, thus embarking on a career in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and training ESOL teachers in the U.S. and abroad. But when she took an anthropology course on Endangered Languages and learned how the spread of English has negatively impacted minoritized languages and cultures, she began actively collaborating with American Indian tribal communities, most notably the Cherokee Nation, to revitalize their languages. Now, she endeavors to share her love of English language teaching while promoting respect for the planet’s linguistic diversity.