Biography
 

           Born and raised in Bellingham, Washington, I grew up exploring the mountains of the North Cascades and the waters of Puget Sound. My interest in the natural world and my persistent curiosity led me to a career in ecology. After receiving my BSc in marine biology from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2007, I left California to explore, work, and travel, but returned in 2009 to pursue a master's degree with Dr. Jim Harvey in the Vertebrate Ecology Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. After four years of roving the waters of Monterey Bay, both in pursuit of humpback whales for my thesis work and as a deckhand on the research vessel John H. Martin, I graduated and left central California for a second time. This time, I headed north to Fairbanks, Alaska, to pursue a PhD at the University of Alaska Fairbanks with Drs. Lara Horstmann and Nicole Misarti. I graduated from UAF in 2019, after earning my doctorate studying the impacts of climate change on Pacific walruses. I have since returned to the Pacific Northwest, and am currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) at the University of Washington in Seattle.