My story.

I was born at The Ohio State University Hospital. For the first nine months of my life, I lived in a foster home before being adopted and raised on the east side of Columbus (Berwick) by a Columbus Public Schools teacher. My mother, an immigrant from Trinidad, supported me and my brother while facing constant financial stress throughout our childhood. But, I got lucky.

I received financial aid to attend Columbus Academy. And that’s where this began. I developed an intense commitment to fighting inequality after seeing how opportunities open up, no matter your upbringing, once you're equipped with resources. I later received financial aid with help from the Ron Brown Scholar Program to attend Tufts (BA), Princeton (MA) and Stanford (JD). I then spent three years at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) protecting consumers against predatory lenders and most recently at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) which invests in communities that have been systematically under-resourced. I care about nothing more than ending economic segregation—which I believe is systemic. I’m convinced we need a new generation of bold leadership in Congress to ensure that my story is every child’s story regardless of the circumstances of one’s birth.

I’m a Democrat who ran for U.S. Congress in 2020 to represent working people of Ohio’s Third Congressional District because 37 years ago, Central Ohio gave me—a newborn with an uncertain future—a chance to succeed.