Helen was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College in Illinois, majoring in English writing and minoring in international relations. She spent three years as editor in chief of The Wheaton Record, the student newspaper, where she covered breaking news, faculty cuts and campus debates over race. She also redesigned the paper’s digital format after a pandemic shift to mostly online publishing. Helen has interned at the Portland-based alt-weekly Willamette Week and The Chronicle of Higher Education in D.C., and her work has appeared in Christianity Today.
