I was born and raised in Kentucky to Sierra Leonean immigrant parents who arrived in the United States in the early 70s. I am the youngest of three kids, and school was always impressed upon my siblings and I as the most important thing from a very young age. Though I focused a lot on school growing up, I always was heavily involved in player soccer since the age of 5. In high school, I was a two-year starter on the varsity soccer team, and I went onto player soccer in college at Western Kentucky University. In college, I majored in Chemistry, with a minor in Mathematics. Doing chemistry in college afforded me the opportunity at a summer long internship at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. During my internship at the CDC, I had a mentor who encouraged me to get my PhD, therefore, I applied and was admitted to the PhD program within the Chemistry department at Purdue University in Indiana. After 5 years, I graduated from Purdue University with my PhD, which opened the doors for me to accept a postdoctoral research position at UC Berkeley in 2013. After two years at UC Berkeley, I accepted a researcher position at Genentech in which I work in a research lab to discover novel therapeutics for disease prevention.