Lily is a doctoral student in Theater Arts and Performance Studies at BrownLily Mengesha University. She is a performer, activist and scholar. Her research examines artists in the Americas who re-cast the history of colonial power through bodily performances. In her work, she seeks to elucidate how the act of bearing witness to affective motions in performance can complicate and mature public understanding of indigenous identity. She is also interested in the production of the Native image in Western popular media and their implicit repercussions. Her performance work includes word play, a collaborative installation with artist Zavé Martohardjono at the Collage Festival in 2012.  In 2011, Lily was a member of the Hemispheric Institute of Politics and Performance's emerging artist program, EMERGENYC. There, she worked with artists such as George Emilio Sanchez, Guillermo Goméz-Peña, Tim Miller and Fulana. Through this experience, she produced Arrive-a-Tourist-Leave-a-Local, a ritualistic hair-castration, at La Mama Experimental Theater. 

Before arriving at Brown, Lily worked as a Kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn, New York.  She holds an M.S. Ed in Elementary Education from Hunter College Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in English (Concentration in Gender and Sexuality Studies) from Bryn Mawr College.