I’m a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, where I teach film and video production. I have produced and directed documentary, narrative and experimental films, which have been screened in film festivals nationally and internationally. My first feature film Gettin Grown and a short experimental film Not Color Blind, Just Near Sighted have won numerous awards in screenings around the country.

I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but earned my BA in history from Washington University and got my MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University. I’ve worked for the St. Louis Black Repertory Theater, taught high school, and served as a documentary researcher for Eyes on the Prize producer, Henry Hampton. From 2002 to 2008 I was an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In 2005 I received the Media and Photography Fellowship from the Alabama State Council of the Arts.

I love films power to shape perception. My inspirations are Spike Lee, John Sayles, Abbas Kiarostami and Toms Gutirrez Alea, who foreground reality over fantasy and make films intended to challenge not just entertain.

A central goal of my work is to portray the lives of African-Americans especially children in authentic, complex ways, as opposed to the usual limiting on-screen representations.