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From early on, I’ve been fascinated with languages, their diversity and history, and I love teaching. I trained as a linguists and taught linguistics at several universities in the US, including Cornell and Stanford, and in the UK, Norway, the Netherlands and Russia. About 12 years ago, I also started teaching at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at Santa Clara University, and since 2020 I’ve been teaching in over a dozen OLLI programs around the country. I also lecture for Context Travel and, by invitation, at other institutions. If you are interested in inviting me to lecture for your group, you can look up my range of expertise under “Linguistics” in the menu above.

But my “day job” is teaching English to speakers of Russian. I offer private online lessons, as well as occasional group courses in pronunciation and grammar . Most of my students are immigrants from the former USSR, while others reside in Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Israel and elsewhere. I really enjoy helping these wonderful people transform their lives through learning the English language and the American culture.

In my spare time, I like to write about languages, linguistics, geography and geopolitics at Languages of the World blog. My travel writing, literary translations and other essays are posted on my Personal page. My other hobbies are cooking, at which I am quite good I’m told, and gardening, at which I am a novice. The picture below is of roses in my garden.

Feel free to explore links in the menu above to find out more about my work and beyond.