Student Success & Residential Life
Building community and navigating institutions
Much of my most sustained work has been grounded in a simple observation: elite institutions carry unwritten rules, cultural expectations, and a hidden curriculum that some students inherit and others have to discover on their own, often at significant cost. I've spent over a decade trying to make those things visible and navigable, both for individual students and through the programs and structures I've helped create.
Founding Stanford's First Generation Program
My first professional role in student affairs was as Director of Stanford's First Generation Program, an early institutional initiative that informed the development of what is now Stanford's First-Generation and Low-Income Student Success Center.
The work was grounded in evidence from the start. I conducted surveys, focus groups, and peer-institution benchmarking to map the barriers affecting students' academic transitions, financial navigation, and sense of belonging. I drew on social-belonging research to frame the problems and design the interventions, and synthesized findings into a 100+ page report with concrete recommendations for university leadership. I hired and supervised nine temporary staff to implement a week-long orientation program for incoming FLI students as part of New Student Orientation, and developed materials for students and their families that were later adopted by peer institutions. The program also included diversity training for student affairs staff and coordinated support for students navigating academic, financial, and personal crises.
What I learned in that role was that many of the challenges students face are not individual shortcomings but institutional design problems. That perspective has shaped everything I've done since.
Residential Advising — Eliot House, Harvard University (2014–present)
As a live-in Resident Tutor and Officer of Harvard College, I've provided holistic academic, personal, and pre-professional advising to a residential community of approximately 450 undergraduates annually, including academic planning, fellowship advising, career guidance, and support through personal and family crises. The role includes on-call crisis response: responding to medical and mental health emergencies, coordinating with HUHS, CAMHS, HUPD, and the Dean of Students Office, and providing first-response support and follow-through for students in acute distress.
Advising roles across my tenure have included Sophomore Academic Advising (2014–2023), Fellowships Advising (2014–2016), Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging Advising (2017–2024), and Culture & Community Advising (2025–present).
Following the discontinuation of the Class Diversity Series during the pandemic, I developed and led an Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging initiative focused on strengthening support, visibility, and community for first-generation and low-income students within the house. In that role, I designed approximately 10 programs annually, including financial literacy workshops, faculty navigation sessions, career panels, identity-affirming gatherings, and community-building events. This work was recognized with the Alan Heimert and Arline Grimes Award in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Class Diversity Series, Eliot House (2017–2020)
The Class Diversity Series was a year-long co-curricular program I designed for the full Eliot House community, grounded in scholarship on social class, belonging, and inequality in elite educational settings. Rather than treating class as a topic for students from particular backgrounds, the program was built around the idea that understanding institutions requires conversation across different experiences and perspectives.
Each semester combined structured dialogue, faculty and practitioner conversations, community-building activities, and applied workshops focused on topics such as the hidden curriculum of academic life, the unwritten rules of professional settings, financial planning, career navigation, cultural mismatch, and the psychological dimensions of upward mobility.
What made the series distinctive was its design: it functioned as an ongoing curriculum rather than a collection of isolated events. By combining scholarship, reflection, and community engagement over the course of the academic year, it created sustained opportunities for students to examine how class shapes educational experiences, relationships, and opportunities within and beyond the university.
Stanford First-Generation and Low-Income Alumni Network (2021–present)
As a volunteer leader with Stanford's First-Generation and Low-Income Alumni Network (FLAN) since 2021, I've served on a working board responsible for the organization's programming, operations, governance, and strategic direction. After serving as Co-Lead of both the Community Building and Education & Enrichment Committees, I went on to serve as Vice President of Operations and, since 2024, Co-President.
During that time, I've helped strengthen the organization's operational and governance infrastructure, including strategic planning processes, financial oversight systems, and needs assessment and evaluation practices. FLAN serves more than 2,000 alumni and also supports student-to-alumni transitions through programming designed to help first-generation and low-income students navigate key educational and professional transitions.