I was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on August 6th, 1982. I have received a Ph.D. in 2016 and an M.A. in 2010 from the Department of Romance Studies at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. I also attended Oberlin College and Conservatory where he received a B.A. in French and Francophone Studies as well as a B.M. in Viola Performance.

While , I also have worked in a university setting, I also have experience teaching both music and languages from K-12. In terms of language instruction, I spent a year as an English Teaching Assistant in Guadeloupe French West Indies working for the Ministry of Education for the French State. There I was required to learn the French system of measurements.

When I arrived in 1st grade in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I was told first hand of an apparent serious problem pertaining to my reading level and its relationship to that of my peers. In fact, this ‘problem’ was so urgent that my mother had to report to the principal’s office for a conference to be told that her six year old, Reggie, who had spent countless nights with read-along books and cassette tapes and even records in addition to sing-along books with sheet music, was reading too fast and too well. Furthermore, if there was not an immediate intervention instructing him in the local methodologies of phonetics, he would be hindered. Later on that year, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity, and it was subsequently decided that I could not learn and that it would be difficult for me. In retrospect I'm not sure what that was all about, but I hear that it is often heard all too often of many children. I never slowed down, and I did learn their way. As far as A.D.H.D. was concerned, my family decided that I would pick up a new activity to keep my focused, and I was enrolled in violin.

I attended Oberlin College and Conservatory where I received a B.A. in French and Francophone Studies as well as a B.M. in Viola Performance.
Currently, have completed my Ph.D. in Romance Studies at Duke Universit