I'm a single parent to a bright and curious 8-year-old girl who made her way into my life through domestic adoption when she was a mere 6 days old. Nestled in a sleepy Southern California beach community, our home has recently been turned into a bed-and-breakfast by a Maine Coon cat whom we've named Elphaba. A Jill of all trades, I've honed skills in graphic design, programming, systems administration, and web development. I studied cultural anthropology at UC Berkeley followed by theatre (dramaturgy) at UCLA. Upon graduating, I enjoyed more than a decade in a computer-related career at UCLA before leaving in 2009 to focus on raising my daughter full-time. In 2010, I launched Chocolate Hair / Vanilla Care to chronicle my journey learning to care for my daughter's naturally curly hair. Despite a burgeoning natural hair movement, our blog specifically addressed the natural hair needs of babies and children for transracial adoptive parents, which at the time was underrepresented online. Over the course of four years I detailed my daughter's natural hair journey as I learned to "do hair," mostly through trial and error. Come 2014, natural hair resources for parents online had broadened in scope and contributors, which meant it was time for me to take a step back and let those who have natural hair take their rightful place as teachers. I curated the very basic styling posts I had written into a beginning hairstyling book (Chocolate Hair Vanilla Care: A Parent's Guide to Beginning Natural Hair Styling) and retired the blog, forever thankful for the love and support of the many naturalistas, bloggers, and entrepreneurs I met along the way. These days, while raising my daughter I also I write novels and make crafty things.
