She won "The Best Supporting Actress" award at the 19th Annual Cable Ace Awards in 1997 for her portrayal as "Jeanette" in The Ditchdigger's Daughters (1997).
Though she took filmmaking classes at Minneapolis Community College,
she got her degree in communications from the University of Minnesota,
then went on to the American Film Institute.
She was a member in good standing of the Northern Warehouse Artists' Cooperative, an experimental housing development for low-income artists located in the warehouse district of downtown St. Paul, MN.