I grew up with a love for the natural world and have been obsessed with wild animals from a very young age. After taking an interest in biology and environmental science during my teenage years, I decided that I wanted to become a wildlife biologist in high school and never looked back, earning a wildlife bachelor's degree from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIUC) in 2018. So far in my career, I've been lucky enough to assist in wildlife conservation, management, and research efforts across the United States (while supported by universities, government agencies, and non-profit organizations), working on an array of beautiful and important wildlife species from wetland to upland, desert to prairie (but the forest is where I'm most at home). 

I developed a deep fascination for wildlife-habitat relationships and linking spatial behavior to landscape structure while conducting master's work on elk (wapiti) at the University of Kentucky (UK) with Dr. Matt Springer and Dr. John Cox. While on the elk project, I got a chance to help with capture and tracking field work across the reclaimed minelands of the central Appalachians, experiencing the places elk live and developing research questions related to habitat selection and reproduction. My time at UK also introduced me to the analysis of telemetry data, which is now one of my primary research interests. Since then, I've continued to expand my focus in the realm of applied wildlife science, incorporating ecological forestry and quantitative methods for modeling habitats and populations as new research areas. 

Currently, I'm a PhD candidate in Dr. Dan Thornton's Mammal Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab at Washington State University (WSU), studying the effects of "wildlife friendly" pre-commercial thinning treatments on snowshoe hare ecology. This project is highly comprehensive, designed to understand both demographic and behavioral responses to treatment, and I am grateful for being given this unique and privileged look at the life of an iconic species in a truly remarkable place. I am excited to complete field work for the hare project this autumn (2025) and continue analysis and writing during the rest of my time at WSU.