Beyond Academia

I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 29, 1957, and grew up in newly-suburban Smyrna. My father, an aerospace engineer, was raised in a farmhouse on Upper Pigpen Road in the mountains of western North Carolina and graduated high school in a class of thirteen. My mother, a homemaker and teacher who should have run a multi-national corporation, grew up in her grandmother’s boarding house in Atlanta’s Little Five Points. I have three wonderful siblings, two sisters and a brother. I’ve been married to David Farber since 1985; we met in the social science tearoom at the University of Chicago on our first day of graduate school. Our son, Max, now lives in Albuquerque. Our family’s path looks like this: Chicago; DC; Honolulu; Lawrence (KS); NYC (upper west side); Kalaheo (Kauai) and Sunset Beach (O’ahu); NYC; Jakarta; NYC; Albuquerque; Philadelphia; Lawrence/Lecompton.