Brief Biography

I was born and raised in Grants Pass, Oregon. As a child, I volunteered with Southern Oregon University at their archeological site at Hanley Ranch, as well as took classes that brought me out into the Klamath Basin and to old military forts around the Rogue Valley. I was also able to work on Egg Mountain at Choteau, Montana when I was five though Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies. I alsoattended several Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meetings starting with the Albuquerque, NM meeting in 1993.

In high school, I was able to work at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) as a science camp counselor at Hancock Field Station. Hancock Field Station is located near Fossil, OR and is two miles from the John Day River. I worked for OMSI for five seasons as a counselor and interacted with the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service on the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. I worked with a camp for high school students called the Paleontology Research Team. This team traveled to areas in the John Day Fossil Beds, and the Ochoco Forest in search of fossils. Students had the opportunity to learn field jacketing techniques, proper data collection and recording techniques and proper ways to search out and to extract fossils.

In 2005 I came out to the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T) to study Paleontology. I worked at the Museum of Geology on the South Dakota School of Mines campus. I also volunteered in the Paleontology lab. In the lab I worked on sediment from the Ellensburg Formation in Washington state. I also prepared mammalian fossils from the Big Pig Dig from the Big Badlands National Park. This included preparing bedding jackets and prepping fossils using pneumatic tools to remove matrix from the fossils and gluing fractures pieces together. I was an active member of the SDSM&T Paleontology Club. With that club I had the chance to do field work out in the Pierre Shale. I also listened to professional talks, and talks from grad students and seniors on their projects. I began to attend the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meetings as a student member, the first meeting being the 65th annual meeting in Mesa, AZ. In 2005 I joined the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the Geological Society of America. In the summer of 2006 I  worked as an intern instructor with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's Science Camps department at Hancock Field Station. I also attended the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 66th annual meeting in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.  

I  became a member of the Ecological Society of America in 2006. I received my Wilderness First Responder at Humboldt State University in May 2007. I worked at Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park in the summer of 2007 as a David B. Jones intern. In the beginning of the fall semester, I took on responsibilities as Secretary of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Paleontology Club. I also attended the SVP conference in Austin, TX in the fall of 2007. The fall also saw the addition of a new part time job with the South Dakota State Archeological Research Center and an assistant curatorial position with the SDSM&T Museum of Geology. During the winter break, I was able to take a once in a life-time trip to the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador.

In the summer of 2008, I on attending a geology and a paleontology field camp. Geology field camp was based in Beulah, Wyoming with projects throughout the Black Hills and into the Slim Buttes area of South Dakota. Paleontology field camp was based at the Angostura Recreation Area with the majority of our field work focused in the exposures of Pierre Shale in the Buffalo Gap Grassland. I also returned to Ashfall that summer to assist with the construction/excavation of the new "Rhino Barn." In the fall of 2008, I attended SVP in Cleavland, OH and presented my first poster.

I graduated from SDSM&T in 2009 with my BS, and took a job as a preparator with the University of Nebraska State Museum (UNSM) in Lincoln. My position is part of the Highway Salvage Paleontology Program which is a joint operation with and Museum and the Nebraska Department of Roads. This was a two year temporary position. During my time with UNSM I presented posters at the 2009 GSA meeting in Portland, OR and at the 2010 SVP meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. At the completion of this position, I began graduate school at the University of Oregon.

I completed my a M.S. in geological sciences at the University of Oregon studying the evolution of fossil horses in the spring of 2013. I am now a working on my PhD at UO focusing on ecosystem rebound from volcanic eruptions and the phylogeny of the Equidae.