I landed in the United States at sixteen, speaking barely any English, straight into an 11th grade Government and Economics class themed “the American Dream.” My classmates rolled their eyes. I had just watched the Soviet Union collapse. The idea that there was a functioning system creating opportunities for people like me was exhilarating. I have been grateful ever since.

My California public school had a Regional Occupation Program teaching Computer Aided Drafting. Those skills still pay my bills 30 years later. As a teen from a welfare family, I got a paid summer job sorting clothes in a donation center. Because I could file, I got promoted to helping people apply for food assistance. The government program actually worked!

Less than two years after arriving in the country, I was admitted to UC Berkeley’s Architecture program. Taxpayers covered my tuition, and I covered the rest with a job I got by calling architecture firms out of the phone book, alphabetically, until someone hired me. That is what a functioning opportunity engine looks like.

Fast forward: I moved east, worked for a top architecture firm, then had my first baby in the middle of the 2009 financial crisis. When I was ready to come back from my six-week maternity leave, I was told I did not have a job to return to. There were no architecture jobs. So I did what a lot of Americans do when big systems shut their doors: I built something small of my own.

I started a firm. I worked with Princeton families. I saw up close how hard it is to remodel a home, add an in-law suite, or build anything on a budget in this town. Everyone wanted the same thing: a beautiful, walkable, not-insanely-expensive place to live.

After years of trying to solve the housing crisis one house at a time, I realized I could spend the rest of my life upgrading kitchens, or I could work on the real question: How do we create starter homes again? How do we build “livable, lovable” density instead of fear and backlash? A starter home for me is the door to opportunity: healthier lives, better educational and job options, possibilities for building wealth. I cannot think of a problem in our society that is not somehow linked to a lack of safe and affordable places to live, though of course I am biased.

So I pivoted. I took business classes and learned how to shift my practice toward larger and community-oriented projects that create walkable, human-focused neighborhoods instead of more parking lots. I do not have all the answers, but I am on a mission to research and test solutions. Through my podcast Who Killed the Starter Home? I get to talk to people across the country who are experimenting, trying, and actually testing new models.

Mine is not a “pull myself up by my bootstraps” story. It is a story about what happens when an infrastructure of opportunity works well enough for people to build their own American Dream.

Now I am running for Princeton Council because this town has everything it needs to be an opportunity engine, not just a pretty place with astronomical housing prices, rising taxes, congested bureaucracy and streets. 

I hope to use what I know about design, small business, and government systems to help Princeton actually live its version of the American Dream.