Cambodia
My career has been built on one belief: that the right kind of partnership changes what's possible for students and teachers. Not partnerships on paper, but ones that actually function, day to day, across borders, languages, and institutional cultures. Over the past two decades, I've had the opportunity to work in leadership roles across more than a dozen countries, most recently as Interim President of the American University of Phnom Penh. Before that, I spent five years as Dean of the International School at Sias University in China, where I led a dual-degree program serving over 5,000 students and built working relationships between Chinese and American institutions that outlasted the usual honeymoon phase most transnational programs don't survive. What I've learned is that the hard part of international education is rarely the vision. It's the execution. Contract language that protects both sides. Faculty recruitment and support across time zones. Tuition structures that are clear and fair. Leadership on the ground that understands both contexts. When those pieces work, students thrive. When they don't, everyone pays the price. I hold an EdD in Leadership and Innovation from Arizona State University, and I've spent my career translating that foundation into real outcomes in real institutions, from K-12 bilingual programs in Arizona to university leadership in East and Southeast Asia. If you're working on something in international higher education and want to think it through with someone who has been inside these partnerships at every level, I'm always open to a conversation.
Leading the senior management team of the American University of Phnom Penh through a period of active institutional development. I believe leadership starts with presence including regular conversations with students and faculty, not just senior staff, and that's shaped how I've approached the role from day one. Current priorities include recruiting senior academic leaders, including deans and a director for the Teaching and Learning Center, which we've recently restructured to sharpen its focus on pedagogical quality. In parallel, I'm advancing new international partnerships and strengthening existing ones, consistent with the university's longer-term growth strategy.
While living in China, I ran my own consulting practice supporting small regional American colleges in managing and optimizing their partnerships with Chinese universities. The work was practical involving contract structures, dual degree program design, operational problem-solving across two very different institutional cultures. I could do it effectively because I wasn’t advising from a distance. I lived in China, worked regularly on the ground with Chinese institutional partners, and understood both sides of these relationships firsthand.
Serving as Dean of the International School at Sias University meant leading one of the largest Sino-foreign dual degree programs in China, with over 5,000 students working simultaneously toward degrees from both a Chinese and an American partner university. The work that mattered most wasn’t administrative; it was solving real problems. American and Chinese education regulations are genuinely incompatible in significant ways, and making a program legal, functional, and academically sound on both sides required years of navigating that tension carefully. During my tenure we achieved full regulatory alignment and passed accreditation for the first time in the program’s history. On the student side, I developed an English language tracking system that gave students and their tutors targeted, individualized progress reports rather than generic feedback. That kind of focused support, combined with stronger academic structures overall, helped move the on-time graduation rate from 63% to 93% and we sustained it. When I left, the program had a solid leadership structure, regulatory footing on both sides, and accreditation standing it had never had before. That felt like the right note to leave on.
I earned my EdD from Arizona State University, so when the opportunity came to teach in ASU’s master’s program I didn’t hesitate. ASU’s commitment to access; the belief that a world-class education shouldn’t be reserved for a narrow slice of people is something I genuinely believe in. The students I worked with were mostly career changers transitioning into teaching. They came with real professional experience and needed something different from a traditional graduate program; less theory for its own sake, more frameworks they could actually use. My courses focused on teacher leadership, instructional supervision, and professional development, and the most rewarding part was watching people who had already built one career find their footing in a new one.
I came to Horseshoe Trails Elementary to build a Chinese language immersion program for native English speakers in Pre-K through 6th grade. Half of every student’s school day was taught entirely in Mandarin by native Chinese-speaking teachers. For a school in Cave Creek, Arizona, that was a significant undertaking, and the program quickly became one of the more sought-after options in the Phoenix area. Part of what made it work was building community beyond our own walls. I coordinated with other Chinese immersion programs across Phoenix to create a shared support network for students and teachers because programs like this are hard to sustain in isolation. The Confucius Institute’s support of the program connected me to partners in China, and those relationships eventually led to an opportunity I couldn’t pass up: moving to China to lead a dual degree university program at Sias. Looking back, everything that came after traces back to what we built at Horseshoe Trails.