Welcome to this website! I am a full-time free-lance writer with 17 years of parish staff experience with small groups, RCIA, adult faith formation, and social justice ministries. I have been a passionate believer in small church communities since the first RENEW arrived in Minnesota in the late 1980s. My husband Jim and I have been in small groups ever since, and most recently have helped establish small groups in our new parish in a Minneapolis suburb, and our "summer parish" in Wisconsin.

I was born in Newark, NJ, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and graduated from Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa, with a major in English and minor in journalism, and from the University of Minnesota with an M.A. in English. I worked in advertising and public relations agencies and as the director of student recruitment for the University of Minnesota's 45,000-student Minneapolis campus, and I've been a free-lance writer for most of my adult life. My magazine articles have appeared in Minnesota Parent, Catechumenate and Church magazines. I've completed my second novel, a mystery (literary agents and publishers can form a line to the right).

From 1989-2006, I was the Pastoral Associate for Adult Faith Formation at St. Rita's Catholic Church, Cottage Grove, Minnesota, a suburban parish of 1,600 families. My ministries there included small groups (the basis of St. Rita's adult faith formation); RCIA, which my husband Jim and I co-facilitated; the social justice and sister parish ministries, and large-group adult faith formation opportunities. I began writing the Gathered In His Name meeting guides in 1999 for the 25-30 small groups then at St. Rita's. St. Anthony Messenger Press  published the first eight meeting guides and a Leader's Guide in spring of 2006. More titles are now under consideration.

We divide our time between a lake cabin in Northern Wisconsin and a townhouse in Ramsey, a suburb of Minneapolis. We have three amazing children, Chris, Becca, and Mark, who live on the East and West Coasts.