I am a postdoc in the Dunn Lab in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. I got my PhD  in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University in 2023, where I worked in the Cooper Public Science Lab. My dissertation examined the role of citizen science in shaping public engagement with environmental issues. I am also an experienced science communicator and my work has appeared in Smithsonian, Discover, Scientific American, Undark, Atlas Obscura, on the TEDx stage and in many other outlets and publications.

I graduated with Highest Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015 with a degree in Biology. My undergraduate training was primarily in evolutionary ecology and I worked in the Pfennig Lab where I wrote my thesis on rattlesnake evolution. I also received a minor in Creative Writing and wrote a manuscript of poetry called Drift, Fence, a second thesis.

Mary Oliver tells us that all her life she wanted to be married to amazement-- to be willing to be dazzled. I too yearn for, and time and again discover, that amazement in the natural world: in the shad finding their way from the sea to their natal stream by scent, the hummingbird harvesting spider webs for its nest, the still blue lakes above tree-line in the Sierras and the blistering forth of life in Yasuní, deep in the Amazon.

I spent undergrad myself getting dazzled by ecology. In graduate school, I sought to connect my experience with the experiences of others. My professional goal is to work at the nexus between these worlds-- using public engagement in science to further ecological research and conservation goals.