I am an unabashed lover of animals; my passion for animal life has shaped my career from the very beginning. However, before I took my sophomore Vertebrate Natural History course at Pacific Lutheran University, which used natural history specimens to learn about vertebrate biodiversity, I didn't really have a concept of the function of of natural history collections - I had never even visited a museum before. I immediately fell in love with the new perspectives to study animals that these collections offered because I realized that there was a physical, tangible way to learn about wild animals as well as engage with the deep history of how this animal biodiversity has been studied by others.

As a graduate student, I learned more about the breadth of analytical techniques that could be used to answer questions at the intersection of disparate fields of study, pushed the boundary of our understanding about how entire clades of mammals interact over evolutionary time scales, and discovered my enjoyment of mentoring students. I had the opportunity to work with two excellent undergraduate students, including coauthoring a manuscript with undergraduate student Ryan Keenan. I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in 2019 and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Field Museum in 2020 - much of which had to be completed remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic - upon which time I began my position at ASU and now oversee the care and maintenance of ASU's vertebrate natural history collections.

When I'm not in the collections or out in the field, you can typically find me retrieving my stolen shoes from my two ferrets, engaging in nerdy hobbies like playing Dungeons and Dragons with my longstanding online friend group, or exploring the beautiful state of Arizona I call home.