Hello!

Hi! My name is Zoë and I'm starting at UMSI this fall in the MSI program (LIS + SC concentrations, although this may soon change!) I love cats and dogs and board games and pinball and various shades of geeking out. In terms of my professional goals, I'm excited about helping diverse community members make progress towards their goals through technology, whether that means supporting queer & trans online peer communities (I'm working on a research project on this topic!), improving assistive technology, or answering technology reference questions for adult learners. I find it really important to work and enact change in the context of community, and I'm looking forward to exploring how I can do so within a college/university library or student services setting. These interests are all kind of rough sketches however -- I'm still figuring things out.

More about me: I was born in the Chicago area but mostly grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts (just outside of Boston/Cambridge). I lived in the Twin Cities in Minnesota for six years -- I first studied anthropology at Macalester College and then worked at a bustling, loud, lovely public library in Saint Paul. I ended up there via the Community Technology Empowerment Project, and I owe a lot of my focus as an adult to that wonderful AmeriCorps program. I moved back to Boston to work in Internet research and then again to Seattle to work in an academic library as a technology assistant before finally getting here to Ann Arbor in 2016. I hope to make it back to New England (ideally Western Mass/Pioneer Valley) and work for a liberal arts or community college.

I love spicy food, mountains and woods, feminist sci-fi, tasty coffee, and in general a lot of introvert pursuits. Oh, and I adopted a kitty recently from the Humane Society of Huron Valley's cat cafe. Jane is the absolute cutest -- she plays fetch! She makes weird adorable chirping noises!

Jane being a sweetheart

I think that's it ^_^