After returning to Los Angeles, I began working in motion picture production, not as an artist, but as a producer, essentially a project manager. It was in this period that I learned the value of goal setting, teamwork, problem solving, and how to work within logistical and budgetary constraints.

It wasn’t until I was running the special effects office on the movie Men in Black that I met a gentleman who was sculpting a spaceship out of urethane foam, like florist foam only it comes in gigantic blocks. I said, “Hey, I can do that!” The sculptor’s union happened to be looking for people at the time and I was immediately put to work on films like The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Batman and Robin, Armageddon, and Minority Report, just to name a few. It was by working in motion pictures that I first became interested in how stories work.

Jobs in motion pictures are project-based and there can be significant downtime. In order to become better at sculpting figures and to pick up a little extra money during breaks between projects, I went to massage school. I loved it and because I had my hands on people all day, my ability to draw and sculpt realistic figures improved. It was also through massage that I also learned to establish rapport quickly, a skill that has served me well doing witness prep.

During one hiatus, I ended up doing chair massage at a law firm. I eventually worked on several of my in-office chair massage clients in their homes doing table massage. One client and I grew particularly close and she would confide in me about the interoffice politics at the firm. I knew most of the characters from my chair massage gig at her office. The client was brilliant and one of if not the hardest working people I’ve ever met. At the same time though, she was sometimes mystified by what caused others in the office to do and say what they did. Based on what she had told me over the months that she was my client, I started to sketch out what I thought were the motivations and intentions for her colleagues’ words and actions.

She said, “You’re so good at this stuff, you should be a trial consultant.” I replied, “What is a trial consultant?” What a fateful conversation! This was early 2005.

Soon after I began working at a trial consulting firm as a researcher. My primary duty was to conduct post-trial interviews (PTIs) with actual jurors from the cases we worked on. I spoke to hundreds of jurors. This laid the foundation for understanding what jurors found persuasive, or not, and points of confusion.

Then one day, the owner came to me and said that she wanted to bring me into meetings with the clients, but that my Bachelors in Art was not a sufficient qualification for them to take me seriously. She needed me to go get an advanced degree.

I chose between U.C. Irvine and Claremont Graduate University. Coincidentally, both were exactly 49 miles from my front door. I ended up at Claremont studying applied cognitive psychology, focusing exclusively on juror and jury decision-making and the impact of emotions on those decisions. I had the best doctoral advisor possible, Dr. Dan Krauss, not only because he’s one of the best people I’ve ever met, but also because he holds both a J.D. and a Ph.D. in forensic psychology. I continued working freelance in trial consulting as I studied. I did post-trial interviews, wrote voir dire, analyzed data, interviewed shadow jurors, assisted in jury selections, among other things. I received my doctorate in 2011. My dissertation was on the biases caused by jurors’ emotional reactions to trial information and attempts to mitigate those biases. SInce earning my Ph.D., I have worked with some of the best litigation and graphics consultants in the field, from whom I’ve learned so much.

It’s funny to look back with the benefit of hindsight and see how my whole life, each decision, each experience, and each change in career path, gathering skills and tools along the way, has led me to where I am. It does feel like destiny.