I have always wondered if the antidote to indifference is empathy. And I think my creative life has been an exploration of that question.

My earliest memories are of playing make-believe with my siblings in the woods behind our home in Alabama. Wearing crowns of kudzu, we journeyed from the shires of Middle Earth to the plains of Narnia, enchanted by the experience of seeing the world through someone else's eyes. That fascination has shaped my professional life, though eventually I stopped designing pillow forts and started designing buildings.

I received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Master of Architecture with High Distinction from the University of Michigan. After a decade designing affordable housing, transitional shelters for refugees, and charter schools, I made a career shift into documentary filmmaking.

My first feature documentary, REFUGE, began in 2017, when it felt like our country was ripping apart at the seams. Extremism was on the rise, and Americans seemed increasingly unable to understand one another. We set out to explore the roots of hate and why extremist ideologies were resonating with so many people. What we ultimately captured was an unlikely friendship between a leader in the KKK and a Muslim heart doctor, a friendship that revealed how healing can come from the very people we've been taught to fear.

My background in architecture taught me to see our cities as physical manifestations of the forces that shape them. Filmmaking has revealed something similar about people. Our lived experiences are deeply personal, but they are also shaped by larger cultural, historical, and systemic forces. Through filmmaking, I hope to explore intimate human stories that illuminate the relationship between individual lives and the world around them.

LOVE, YOUR BIRTH MOM is a continuation of this inquiry.

As an adoptive mother, I've often been struck by the way people talk about adoption. I'm frequently cast as the hero of our family's story, while my daughters' birth mothers are either absent from the conversation or reduced to assumptions about who they are and why they made the decisions they did. I've wondered why we are so quick to celebrate the families created through adoption, yet spend so little time considering the women on the other side of that experience.

Those questions led me to Rachael and Nikole, two women navigating unexpected pregnancies and deeply consequential decisions about motherhood. Over four years of filmmaking, I came to understand just how inadequate our familiar narratives can be in capturing the complexity of their experiences. Their choices cannot be separated from the people they love, the circumstances of their lives, or the futures they're trying to imagine.

With LOVE, YOUR BIRTH MOM, I wanted to make a film that doesn't argue a position or point audiences toward a particular conclusion. Instead, I hope it invites audiences to sit with these women and feel the emotional weight of choices that may look very different from their own. I don't expect everyone to arrive at the same conclusions, but I hope they leave with a deeper understanding of these women, and perhaps a little more willingness to extend that understanding to others.

I suppose that's what keeps me making films. At their best, stories connect us to one another. They invite us into other people's lives, to carry their burdens, share their joys, and laugh alongside them. And perhaps, for a little while, the distance between our experiences doesn't feel quite so great.