I am a cognitive psychologist, professor, artist, and creativity researcher fascinated with how constraints shape perceived possibilities and creative thought.

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Born in Romania under a dictatorship, into a life already shaped by constraints long before I began studying them, I came to the US determined to "succeed". At 18, I got a job as a bank teller and enrolled at the nearest college. I graduated in three years while working full-time, then completed my PhD in cognitive psychology at Princeton in four. Immigrant mindset can sometimes be a built-in optimization algorithm: faster, better, more! 

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Two years into graduate school, academia no longer seemed like the right fit. Too slow, not impactful enough. So naturally, I moved to New York. Recruited by a computational finance firm, I eventually became head of strategic planning, a rich education in applied decision-making and real-world complexity. A major health issue narrowed options and widened perspective, prompting a shift away from finance and into entrepreneurship, before a happy return to academia, as professor at Rider University, a mere six years after confidently declaring this path was not for me.