Prior to my current position as the chief curator of history, I served as the senior historian/curator of social history for a decade. My major exhibition and publication projects include Votes for Women: Celebrating New York’s Suffrage Centennial (2017) and An Irrepressible Conflict: The Empire State in the Civil War (2012).  I am also the author of Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany’s Rapp Road (SUNY Press, 2008), which focused on a community that migrated to Albany from Shubuta, Mississippi, and the greater migration experience in Albany.

My on-going research projects are on different ends of the history-content spectrum. Since the suffrage centennial in 2020, I have been researching the history of the Equal Rights Amendment in New York State.  Additionally, I am studying the influence New Yorkers had on Mark Twain’s life and writing.

Chief Curator of History, New York State Museum, and New York History journal co-editor, New York Academy of History Fellow (inducted 2014), New York State Historic Preservation Board member, University at Albany Center for Applied Historical Research board member.