She studies the bureaucratic incorporation of immigrants and local government response towards immigrants. She received her Ph.D. in public administration from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. She was a National Science Foundation IGERT fellow with the Climate Change, Humans, and Nature in the Global Environment program at KU and received a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation. In 2014 she received the Best Dissertation Award from the Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit Division for her work Welcoming the Outsider: Variations in Local Construction of the Law Toward Immigrants.