At the age of thirteen, she undertook studies at the University of Michigan with the renowned violin pedagogue, Paul Kantor. Colleen was granted an Artistic Excellence Fellowship at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Muisc, earning her Bachelor and Master of Music in Violin Performance under the mentorship of concert violinist Mark Kaplan, along with orchestral studies with the late Jorja Fleezanis (former concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra), Alexander Kerr (former concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra). Other significant mentors include one of the most widely respected pedagogues, the late Nam-Yun Kim (Korea National University of the Arts).

She has previously studied at the Aspen Music Festival and School, performed on American National Public Radio “A Prairie Home Companion,” Ravinia Festival, Castleton Festival, Taipei National Concert Hall (Taipei, Taiwan), 4th Katara European Jazz Festival (Doha, Qatar), and the Mediterranean Opera Studio Festival (Caltagirone, Sicily), among others; and worked with the conductors of the New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic, and Royal Swedish Opera. She has also recorded for several collaborative publications and appeared on stage with Ed Sheeran for his 2023 Subtract Tour.

Interested in outreach work, Colleen has presented workshops in Belize (MusAid), Kenya (Art of Music Foundation), and Tunisia (Atlas Music Academy). For one year, she directed the Suzuki Violin cohort at the Umoja School of Music, a performing arts program that served the international ex-pat and local community in Arusha, Tanzania.

Colleen spent five years in the Middle East (Doha, Qatar) as a member of the Violin Faculty at the Qatar Music Academy. While living in the Arabian desert, she co-created a 12-year pre-collegiate curriculum, an admissions procedure, as well as an internal examination system for the Violin Department. She is fluent in both Mandarin Chinese and English.