I grew up in Hartford, CT, and studied anthropology at Columbia University. I got my start on the radio at a student-run station  in the basement of Barnard College, then stumbled into a gig hosting talk radio in Reunion Island. The job was split between a nighttime personals show called "Tropical Heat" and moderating drive-time discussions of local politics and anything from hair care to missing persons.Since then, I have been a Fulbright fellow in Mozambique, filing stories for print and public radio about tangles of economic development there — on woodcarvers who make a living fashioning ebony replacements for plastic car parts, or cemeteries that have been swept up in real estate booms in rapidly-growing cities. I like nothing more than making mistakes in a new foreign language, and comparing notes on the way that people say "ummm....." around the world. I'm a regular contributor to Marketplace, and I've written features for PRI's The World, All Things Considered, Guernica, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Huffington Post, among others.