Olivia has spent the majority of her life in New Jersey, where she grew up and calls home. Since 2018, she has lived in Michigan, completing her Bachelor’s degree in philosophy and Spanish at the University of Michigan. During her years studying, she worked in the university’s writing center as a writing consultant for her peers. Simultaneously, and perhaps in the tradition of her parents, lifelong hospitality workers, she has also worked in a variety of food service jobs, currently serving and bartending in a fine dining restaurant.

She brings to OHMA an interest in studying the restaurant by way of oral history. Observing and talking to restaurant patrons from behind the bar and working alongside restaurant staff in the front and back of house, she has met people with manifold backgrounds and aspirations with whom she never may have interacted in the classroom.

She is thrilled to learn about the history and practice of oral history in general and especially as it presents an opportunity to merge what she has learned in and out of the classroom (and create something new from it!)