About Me

I’m a tech culture journalist at The San Francisco Standard and the author of two books, including Killer Looks: The Forgotten History of Plastic Surgery In Prisons, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

I report on the intersection of business, AI, longevity, and technology — and the impact these forces have on everyday life. My recent stories include profiling the creator of the AI Friend pendant, a deep dive into why everyone has a Chinese peptide dealer now, the rise of taser knife fight clubs, and a multifamily dream compound turned eviction nightmare.

Background

My work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Fortune, Fast Company, Forbes, Wired, The Information, VICE, Cosmopolitan, and more. I’ve been booked by the BBC, Sky News, and ABC News to discuss my reporting, and served as an on-air technology correspondent for Fusion, an ABC News/Univision collaboration.

My reporting and research have been supported by a Rockefeller Archive Center fellowship, a Jacob Rader Marcus Center fellowship, a Dow Jones News Fund fellowship, and a Mozilla OpenNews grant. Killer Looks was selected for the San Francisco Public Library’s One City One Book: San Francisco Reads program in 2022. I’ve been a guest speaker at Stanford University (twice) as part of their Humanities programming.

I’m a board member at The San Francisco Writer’s Grotto. I began my career in technology journalism at Shiny Media and Stuff magazine in London, before completing a master’s in journalism at Columbia University. My master’s project, “The K-Pop Plastic Surgery Obsession,” was published by The Atlantic.

I have written two books, Killer Looks: The Forgotten History of Plastic Surgery In Prisons, a narrative nonfiction that explores prison reform through the lens of beauty via the free plastic surgeries offered to the incarcerated (more on this here) and The Future of Science is Female: The Brilliant Minds Shaping The 21st Century, a young adult book spotlighting the women inventing what’s next—from saving oceans to reinventing food.