Candidate for
Council-At-Large; Township of Upper Darby

I was born in Southwest Philadelphia and raised in Delaware County, attending St. Anastasia and Cardinal O'Hara Schools. I then went on to graduate from Harvard with a degree in Government.

Basketball has played a large part of my life and opened many doors for me. In 1984, I was a captain of the team and we won the Catholic League Championship. I had also played for the Philadelphia Belles. At Harvard, I started all four years on a team that won two Ivy League Championships. I was also named four times to the All-Ivy Team and captained my senior year.

After college, I followed a road less taken and played basketball overseas for the next three years: first for Team Corrib, based in Galway County, Ireland, and the next two for TSV Noerdlingen, Bavaria, Germany. I then spent most of the next several years working odd jobs to support my travels in North and Central America, Western Europe and Southern Africa.

When the time came and we were starting a family, we moved to Upper Darby Township where we are now raising our two young daughters.

I first became politically active in Upper Darby advocating single-stream recycling in November 2007. I had found that there was a lot of support for this in our community by going door-to-door and then working with Dave Schwartz on an online and paper petition. In less than six months, we garnered over 2,000 signatures with the help of many residents who volunteered their time to work with our group, Upper Darby Recycle!

In September 2008, Bank of America named me as one of five finalists in their Neighborhood Excellence Initiative Award Program. Part of the award was a $5000 grant which I donated to the Darby Creek Valley Association with the stipulation that part of the money be used to purchase trees to be planted throughout the Township. I am happy to say that just under $1700 bought 62 trees the last of which was planted April 23.

The trees were planted at these various Township sites: Clark Playground; Collenbrook; Sellers Library; Hillcrest, Garrettford, Westbrook Park, Primos, Aronimink Elementary Schools; St.Andrew's and St. Bernadette's School; Beverly Hills Middle School; Archbishop Prendergast and Monsignor Bonner High Schools.