I was born in Southern California and still have family roots there. I spent some of my early years in Germany as a "missionary kid." With my three siblings, I moved to Colorado and eventually attended Colorado State University, completing a double major B.A. in History and Philosophy and an M.A. in History. In 2008, I married my high school sweetheart, Veronica, who also attended CSU. In 2010, we moved to Madison, where I finished my Ph.D. in history in 2016. As part of my research, we lived in Jerusalem in 2012-2013 as I studied at the Hebrew University and conducted archival research. In 2016, we packed up once again for the Boston area after accepting a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School. In August, we will be returning to Madison as I join the Institute for Research in the Humanities (UW-Madison) as a Robert M. Kingdon Fellow in 2017-18.