I work with men, communities, and organizations on the conditions that make wholeness possible. I study what it means for men to belong, to matter, to be seen as whole.
Assistant Professor · UNC Charlotte · Charlotte, NC
“Everything is waiting for you.” — David Whyte
I have spent my career in the company of men trying to find their way back to themselves, including men of color in caring professions, transmasculine men navigating new embodiment, fathers searching for a language for what they feel, and workers in industries that burn people down. My work is about what makes wholeness possible for men who have been told wholeness is not theirs to have.
I came to care work through systems thinking, and to systems thinking through care. The two are not in tension. In my experience, they illuminate each other.
I was born in Pakistan, a place that gave me my first language for hospitality, spiritual depth, and the sacred held alongside the everyday. But I have come to understand that home is less a geography than a quality of presence. I find it more in relationships than in places, more in honest conversation than in any particular soil. My journey has taken me across continents and cities, and I carry Cleveland, St. Louis, and Houston in me as much as I carry Karachi. Charlotte, NC is where I live now, and it has become home the way most good things do, gradually and by choice.
I am on a journey of learning from all beings, human and non-human alike. I believe non-human animals are among my most patient and honest teachers. They do not hedge. They do not perform. The dogs in my life have taught me more about presence, attunement, and unconditional welcome than most curriculum ever could. I also learn from silence, from the din of the world, from rivers and mountain trails that ask nothing except attention.
I stand on the shoulders of giants. My mentors are not footnotes; they are living wells of wisdom and guidance, and I return to them often. Whatever is good in my thinking came through someone else first.
Curiosity is the throughline of everything. I am drawn to questions that resist quick answers, to traditions that hold complexity with humility, and to thinkers who model how to stay genuinely open. Carl Jung taught me that what we do not make conscious emerges later as fate. Parker Palmer showed me that vocation does not come from willfulness but from listening. Krista Tippett modelled how to hold hard questions with tenderness. Antiracism is not a destination I have reached but a discipline I practice: the ongoing work of seeing clearly, naming honestly, and building differently.
Masculinities · trans masculinities · care work · fatherhood · belonging · community research Out on the trailCertain values have become a compass for me, not as doctrine, but as orientation. They call me toward simplicity, toward peace, toward integrity in the alignment of inner conviction and outer action. I find in them a language for what I have always believed but struggled to name.
As John O'Donohue wrote: "The home you are searching for has always been within you." These values are not rules I follow. They are a description of the home I am trying to live toward.
I believe we are accountable to one another, to the earth, and to those who come after us. I believe the inner life shapes the outer world. I believe slow, careful attention is a form of love. These convictions run through everything I do, in the classroom, in the field, and in the quiet.
There is a man I keep meeting in my research. He works hard. He loves his people. He tries to hold things together, often quietly, often alone. He has been shaped by systems that told him toughness was the only language available to him, and he has spent years trying to speak something he was never given words for. He is the working-class man, the forgotten man, the man who is trying hard but carrying it alone. He is the center of my work.
I study the conditions that make it possible for men like this to belong, not just to survive. I am interested in what transforms a man's relationship to himself and to others: what relational infrastructure makes growth possible, what structures of care and community allow men to become more of who they actually are.
My communities include men of color in caring professions, transmasculine people navigating new embodiment, working-class men in extractive industries, fathers searching for language, and caregivers. What I look for across all of them is not what divides them but what they share: the desire to matter, to be seen, to be whole.
Healthy masculinities · working class masculinities · trans masculinities · LGBTQ+ health · anti-racism in higher education Featured Publications
A two-phase mixed-methods study examining how awe, belonging, and relational infrastructure affect retention among male-identifying adults in Charlotte's caring workforce.
Qualitative interviews with transmasculine men exploring how embodiment, belonging, and wholeness intersect after gender-affirming surgery.
With Freeman, K. and Ray-Novak, M.
With Moore, S., Custer, H., and Mitche, M.
With Martin, R. and Klein, G.
Teaching, for me, sits at the intersection of the relational and the structural. I am interested in how people learn to think carefully about complex systems, and how that thinking becomes action. My courses have spanned social work research, the ethics of AI and technology, the social dimensions of engineering, community practice, antiracism, and LGBTQ+ health. What connects them is a sustained attention to policy, power, and the human beings caught inside both.
I have taught graduate and undergraduate students across disciplines. Some of my most formative teaching has been with engineering students navigating social responsibility, and with social work students navigating evidence. In both cases the work is the same: learning to hold complexity without resolving it prematurely.
Policy · social work · engineering ethics · AI and technology · antiracism · community practice Courses taught
Last updated: June 2026 · This list changes. Come back.
Books and voices that are living in me right now. This list changes. Come back.
Reading nowSomewhere between the research and the rigor lives a version of me who is mostly delighted. He goes on long hikes. He reads too many poems. He talks to dogs at length. He believes, without irony, that attention is a form of love.
Poetry is how I learned that the unnameable is worth naming anyway. Click any poet to open their poems.
The people who shaped how I think, feel, and show up. I carry them into every room I enter. Click any card to read their quotes and find their work.
I offer conversations, workshops, and guided spaces for individuals, organizations, and communities doing the slower, deeper work. These offerings draw on my research and practice, and on a genuine belief that transformation is relational.
For men and mixed groups ready to ask hard questions about what masculinity is and what it could be. These are not lectures. They are held conversations, drawing on research and story, that create space for genuine reckoning and genuine possibility.
Workshops and talks for organizations, schools, clinics, and faith communities. We explore what thriving actually looks like for men, beyond performance and stoicism, toward wholeness. Grounded in research and practical enough to take home.
Organizational consulting and facilitation for teams and institutions that want belonging to mean something real. This work maps the relational infrastructure that makes people feel they genuinely matter, and builds practices that sustain it.
Guided spaces and training for communities navigating LGBTQ+ inclusion with honesty and depth. This is not a compliance exercise. It is an invitation to build something genuinely welcoming, starting from values rather than policies.
Practice-based workshops in Marshall Rosenberg's NVC framework, adapted for community, clinical, and educational settings. Learning to hear what people actually need beneath positions, labels, and conflict.
For leaders, educators, and caregivers who design the spaces where people gather. This offering is about the architecture of belonging: the rituals, structures, and micro-moments that make people feel genuinely at home.
One-on-one support for doctoral students navigating the full terrain of graduate life: the writing, the doubt, the identity work, the institution, and the question of what kind of scholar you actually want to become.
If something resonates but does not quite fit your context, write to me. The best conversations usually begin with 'I'm not sure exactly what I need, but' and end somewhere neither of us expected.
Available in-person in Charlotte, NC or virtually. Sliding-scale options available for community organizations.
I am grateful to hear from you. Whether you are a student finding your footing, an organization looking for a thought partner, a scholar interested in collaboration, or simply someone who resonates with this work and wants to say hello, please write.
I try to respond to every message personally. I cannot always do so quickly, but I will do so with care.