I am a philosopher and bioethicist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri with professional appointments at three institutions.
I also teach courses in the Certificate Program in Bioethics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where I'm Associate Professor of Pediatrics & Adjunct Associate Professor of Philosophy.
My primary appointment is in the Bioethics Center at Children's Mercy Kansas City, where I am a Research Associate in Bioethics, as well as Director of Research for the Children's Mercy Certificate Program in Pediatric Bioethics, the Program Director for the Pediatric Ethics Fellowship, and a member of the Hospital Ethics Committee and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.
Additionally, I teach two bioethics courses per year for medical students at the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, which is one of the 10 largest medical schools in the United States
Outside of my home institutions, I serve on editorial boards for the Annals of Medicine and the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, as well as on multiple Data Safety and Monitoring Boards for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). I also served as Chair of the Philosophy Affinity Group for the American Society for Bioethics & Humanities from 2011-2020 and as Ethics Advisor to the Baby Friendly USA NICU Task Force.
I was fortunate to write my PhD dissertation, The Normative Foundations of Civil Marriage, under the supervision of a truly outstanding dissertation committee which included George Sher, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Alastair Norcross, and Rachel Zuckert.
I also benefited from a great group of grad student friends with whom many an evening was spent at the legendary Valhalla grad student pub on the Rice University campus.
I am happily married to another professional philosopher & bioethicist, Leslie Ann McNolty. We spend most of our time outside the office and classroom raising four delightful but exhaustion-inducing children.
Our family lives a short drive north of downtown Kansas City near the quintessential Midwestern town of Parkville, Missouri.
(No, seriously, folks, when literary classics about the American Midwest reach the mass market, they do so with Gale Stockwell's 1933 "Parkville, Main Street" on their covers, even when set in Minnesota or Ohio.)
In addition to being equal parts quaint and quirky, Parkville (and Kansas City more broadly) is a great place to train and race as a distance runner, which I do fairly seriously year-round as a member of the Kansas City Smoke.
With the little time I have left over, I love to read, play sports & board games, and travel.
Recent excursions have included Norway, Scotland, India, Amsterdam (thrice), Puerto Vallarta (thrice), Colorado (twice), Chicago (thrice), Miami (twice), Houston, Seattle, and Washington DC (too many to count).
Bravely or foolishly, I also take an annual summer roadtrip with just my four kids and I to different parts of the United States.