- Raised in Monrovia, California and still missing the waving palm trees.
- Undergraduate degree in Political Science and Biblical Studies from Wheaton College, Illinois 1986-1990, including six months in Lima, Peru in late 1989.
- Young Life administrative staff in Pasadena, California 1990-1992; regional administrator for Southern California 1992-1996; national Strategic Services statistician and cartographer 1998-2002.
- Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University, Durham, NC 1996-2004; dissertation titled “The Institutional Design of Civil Society” found that members of democratically structured voluntary associations do not differ markedly from other citizens in their expressed trust in national government or democracy, implying that it is probably not necessary to force democratic forms on organizations in order to foster a national democratic political culture.
- Research Associate of the Kettering Foundation, Dayton, Ohio, 2003-2004. Co-author of a 2006 National Issues Forums issue book on “Americans’ Role in the World.”
- Assistant Director of the Center for Social Research at Calvin College, August 2004-present, involved in collecting and analyzing data for over 150 projects and counting.