Helen performed in Carnegie Hall and other well-known venues with the New York All-City Orchestras and Bands, and with the Augusta (Georgia) Symphony Orchestra from 1975 - 78. She holds a Master's Degree in Special Education. Helen had a successful career in teaching blind and visually impaired children, and served as Director of Bereavement Services for a hospice prior to turning her professional attention to the flute, music, and performance confidence.

Helen’s flute studio teaching career brought her to national attention because of her innovative approach to music education. Emphasizing the joy of making music and its ability to enrich life, in addition to the achievement of musical excellence, she took her students on music trips to New York City and London, England, as well as arranged for them to perform in community venues as diverse as ice cream parlors and concert halls. Some of Helen’s students have become professional musicians.

Helen’s work in the field of performance anxiety has been featured in Philadelphia Music Makers magazine, Flutewise magazine, The Flutist Quarterly, Pan (The Journal of the British Flute Society), Fluit (The Netherlands), and Flote Aktuell (Germany). She is a regular columnist for Flute Focus magazine, contributing the first and only column dedicated to performance anxiety in the flute world. Helen’s additional articles about music making have been translated into four languages and published in Japan, Australia, Sweden, Great Britain, Poland, and the Netherlands, as well as in numerous publications in the U.S.

Helen has presented workshops on performing confidently in Italy, South Africa, Canada, and England, and in 2010 was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Travel Grant to teach at the Latin American Festival of the Flute in Honduras. She is a member of the National Flute Association, the British Flute Society, the Canadian Flute Association, and the Association of Flutists of Spain, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Raleigh Area Flute Association. For several years, Helen was Coordinator of the Children's Program at the National Flute Association National Convention, the largest gathering of flutists in the world.