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 careers 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 is a member of the National Flute Association, the British Flute Society, and the Association of Flutists of Spain, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Raleigh Area Flute Association. For several years, she was Coordinator of the Children's Program at the National Flute Association National Convention, the largest gathering of flutists in the world. She gave her first international presentation in the spring of 1999 at a London Flutewise event that drew 5,000 participants. In June 2004, at the personal invitation of Sir James Galway, Helen spent two days observing him record his award-winning CD "Wings of Song" with the London Symphony Orchestra at historic Abbey Road Studios in London. From 1995 to 2005, she was the Assistant Manager for FLUTE, an Internet discussion group of 2,500 flutists from 45 countries.