I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

I study political parties, Congress, think tanks, agenda setting, lobbying, and punctuated equilibrium theory. In particular, I am interested in how legislatures process information and solve problems, and how party elites influence policy. I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. I am also a faculty associate with the Policy Agendas Project.

I am the author of The Thinkers: The Rise of Partisan Think Tanks and the Polarization of American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Before academia, I worked for five years in Washington, DC. From 2011-2014, I was Deputy Communications Director for Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a research and advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. GFI works to study and curtail illicit financial flows from developing countries. 

When not working, I spend my time cooking, hiking, and watching baseball. I write about baseball on Substack. I also host and produce a weekly baseball podcast on the New York Yankees.