 Born in 1952 in New Haven, Connecticut, she was educated at the University of Connecticut (B.S., 1974) and Southern Connecticut State University (M.S., 1977).She was a teacher of the deaf in Connecticut from 1977–80 and a Peace Corps teacher of English in Malawi from 1980–83.From 1990-93 she lived and worked in Deschapelles, Haiti, where her husband Steve was a doctor at the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer.