I'm a Filipino-Canadian Assistant Professor for the most part educated in the United States.

I was born in Manila in 1986 during the People Power Revolution. My father worked for the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, which relocated our family to British Hong Kong in 1991 and then to Canada in 1996 in anticipation of the Changeover (reunification with Mainland China). I grew up in Burnaby, a district of Vancouver, then did my BA in Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, majoring in English literature and Creative Writing. My original career dream was to be a fiction writer and poet. I double-majored in English and Creative Writing during my undergraduate degree (2004-2008).

Having to find a paying job after graduating, I became an English as a Second Language/English for Academic Purposes teacher in Vancouver and Calgary. It gave me insight into the diverse challenges and experiences that people have in life, more empathy for others, and a new sense of professionalism. I pursued an MA in TESL (2013-15) and became interested in sociolinguistics, the social (and economic, political, cultural) contexts of language learning and use. I applied to the PhD program at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, where I spent four years (2016-2020) surrounded by a phenomenal group of critical, practical, intellectual, and courageous fellow scholars interested in celebrating, maintaining, documenting, and researching language diversity around the world.

Shortly after finishing my PhD, I got married and worked as an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Hong Kong (2020-22), and joined the Department of Linguistics at UIUC as Assistant Professor of TESL and Sociolinguistics. I turned my PhD dissertation into a book that examines bi/multilingual communication as well as English as a lingua franca use together in linguistically diverse classrooms with implications for pedagogy, equity, and criticality. I have published in the journals TESOL Quarterly, Journal of Language, Identity, & Education, and Foreign Language Annals, among others.

As I coordinate the MA TESOL practicum which partners with the Champaign-Urbana refugee center, my current research interests lie in Literacy and Second Language Learning for Adults (LESLLA). I also do research on French dual language education in Champaign-Urbana, for which I received an HRI Summer Research Grant. I received the UIUC LEAP Scholar Award for 2024-26, "granted to distinguished early-career faculty at the University of Illinois who demonstrate the highest caliber of academic achievement. Nominees are evaluated on scholarly productivity and contributions to the educational mission of their departments and the College of LAS." I also have a blog on bi/multilingualism in education that I started in Hong Kong, continue to maintain, and is read by people around the world.

I am blessed with a kind and thoughtful husband, a beautiful daughter, and a cute dog.