I graduated in 2000 from the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at Princeton University, where I completed a senior thesis on the fitness consequences of parasites in natural populations of white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys). I went on to do my doctoral dissertation work on the patterns and mechanisms of song evolution in white-crowned sparrows in the Nowicki lab at Duke University. In 2007, I joined the Museum of Natural Science at Louisiana State University to study lineage diversification in Neotropical ovenbirds and woodcreepers (Aves: Furnariidae). I joined the Tulane EEBIO faculty in 2012. Currently, I am working on several collaborative projects that address the proximate and ultimate factors controlling variation in communication signals using a range of techniques drawn from several disciplines.