I’m Taylor (they/he), an interdisciplinary educator, researcher, and music maker originally from Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. Here’s the basic story about how I got here.

Following a very modest career as a child actor, I attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), earning a BFA in vocal performance and a minor in humanities in 2014. CalArts, known for its boundary-pushing artistic training, also provided my first paid teaching opportunity. Through the university’s Community Arts Partnership (CAP), I traveled around the Greater Los Angeles Area for two years, bringing tuition-free arts education to students where their public schools and community centers did not have similar programming. I met some remarkable educators and learners during my time with CAP, and I graduated with a deepened (and enduring) appreciation for education’s transformative power.

After graduation, I attended a summer academy for young opera singers in Payerbach, Austria. I was subsequently invited to study at École Normale de Musique de Paris, which I did and adored during the 2014-2015 academic year.

I then moved to New York City in the summer of 2015, where I worked a slew of jobs related to music performance or education—a semi-classic (and not terribly original) BFA/New York City story. The point is: I returned to the classroom in the 2016-2017 academic year, primarily working with educational nonprofits that partnered with communities experiencing systemic disinvestment. After teaching with several such organizations for three years, I wanted to finesse my pedagogy, ultimately leading to a master’s degree in music and music education at Columbia University, Teachers College, in 2020.

While continuing my work as a music teacher, 2020 marked a significant shift for me personally, academically, and professionally. Global crises (COVID-19, renewed calls for racial and social justice) inspired me to broaden my positive professional impact. That August, my now-husband and I co-founded Creating for Justice, inc. Creating for Justice is an all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to accessible education and anti-oppressive causes. The organization currently offers ~10 services with volunteers across the country. Learn more about Creating for Justice here.

Shortly after, I wanted this positive impact to be all-encompassing. I began considering education-related careers outside of a classroom, which I understood would require additional experience. In turn, I enrolled in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I got another master’s degree, this time in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership, with a concentration in Diversity and Equity in Education, in 2022. I first thought this program would advance my work in arts education, but it did not take long to realize that the issues I had noticed in performing arts education were not subject-specific and that there was much more to do.

Cut to the present day: I am a PhD Candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I teach and assist with courses in U.S. cultural minority studies, diversity and equity in education, pre-service teacher training, Asian American educational history, education law, and advanced composition. My doctoral research centers on intersectionality (theory and practice), policymaking, political discourse, and agentive queer Asian America. I intend to defend my dissertation in the Spring 2025 semester.

While this path to interdisciplinary education research has not been a “conventional” journey, I am privileged to also serve as the Senior Director of Arts Research and Impact at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center—where I study programmatic and pedagogical efficacy, student agency, artistic development, and education policy. In my spare time, I also maintain a small voice studio. For an up-to-date list of my research and teaching activities, check out my CV.

Hopefully, this biography answers some questions. If you’d like to know more, feel free to contact me!

TL;DR:

I’m an experienced music educator-turned-education/cultural-studies-scholar/academic researcher. I study arts education, program evaluation, intersectionality, racialization, cisheterosexism, education policy, and the influence of political discourse. Let’s connect!