My Story

I was born in Texas where my love and passion for wildlife was fostered by my family’s love of the outdoors, the tv personality Steve Irwin of “The Crocodile Hunter” fame and time spent in the Caribbean in Cozumel, Mexico. My family moved to Colorado in 2002. I attended a Waldorf School for several years, then attended and graduated high school from Denver Academy in 2012.  In 2016 I graduated from Eckerd College in St Petersburg, Florida with my B.A. in Environmental Studies and a Biology and Coastal Management minor.

Eckerd’s tropical location served me well as I focused on environmental studies and field research for my passion for snakes, turtles, and crocodiles. After graduating, I received my dive master certification in Cozumel, Mexico then joined the herpetology team and lived at the Sakaerat Biological Preserve in Thailand radio tracking king cobras for a spatial ecology analysis. While in Southeast Asia, I took the opportunity to explore Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore then took a herpetologist position in Madagascar educating student groups and studying the reptile and amphibian biodiversity.

Working in Florida in 2020 was great until March 2020 when the whole world shut down, and because of that, my world shut down as well. So, I had to do what many other millennials do in their 20s, and that was move back home. I worked a simple camp counselor job because thankfully Colorado was a state that was not in utter chaos, like most of the United States. I spent my time learning about the world and researching the places I wanted to visit when everything calmed down. But the most important thing to me was to lay out my life goals as this was a rare opportunity to focus on myself and what I wanted to achieve.

My number one goal was to get down to Antarctica because I had heard you could work there. At my 27thbirthday party, I shared that goal with my best friend.  Her boyfriend at the time had a friend who worked for the United States Antarctic Program. He told me about their website and gave me some tips to improve my CV.  I did not have the scientific experience to be part of a research team there so I had to find an entry-level job that I could qualify for, and the one that appealed to me the most was a cargo specialist. I looked up jobs around Denver that would help me gain the six months of experience required to be accepted for the position and found a cargo job at Denver International Airport. The pay was nice, and unlike many jobs, there will always be cargo so it was job security for the time being. I learned a lot about the aviation industry and enjoyed it. Since I started during the winter in Colorado, not only did I get the cold weather experience I needed for Antarctica, but I decided to take up snowboarding which was a nice way for me to escape to nature on the weekends.

In September of 2021, I started my journey to the frozen world. We had a week of quarantine in San Francisco, then took a private 777 from Air New Zealand to Christchurch where the group went into mandatory 14-day quarantine. Those two weeks were rough for me as my room did not have the best view so I would press my nose up against the window all day in search of new bird species. Days 1-7 were tolerable but by the next week, you were just so sick of it. After 14 days, we went to another quarantine facility, but this time we were allowed to freely mingle with everyone else going down to the ice in our cohort. We were the 3rd group to head down for the season. It was amazing being able to meet people after having little to no contact for 14 days. After waiting another 3 days, we boarded a New Zealand defense force 767 to fly to the Ice.

While on the Ice, I accepted a job in Guam, working with the brown tree snake project for the USGS. My goal was to get back into the sciences, and the USGS is very cool government work. The job was not what I expected and living on Guam was not sustainable.  Although Guam is a beautiful island, it still reminded me of being in the States, and I felt like I was in a straight- jacket the whole time there. The saving grace on the island was all the great people I met who were part of the marine lab, but I needed to find a way out.

A friend I had connected with while I was in Cozumel, posted that she needed someone to fill her naturalist role at the Ritz Carlton Maldives, so I replied and explained my situation to her. This job checked off everything on my bucket list for the next move I wanted to make in my career. 14 days later, I was flying from the middle of nowhere Pacific Ocean to the middle of nowhere Indian Ocean. Working for the Ritz Carlton is amazing!  This company is the best I have worked for so far in my career.  I love this job, the people I work with, and the guests with whom I interact. My main responsibility in the resort is drone pilot.  We collect data on plastic movements and ghost nets (discarded fishing gear) in the ocean. I also lead marine biology lectures and some diving and snorkel excursions. My initial contract was for one year, but I have extended it for another year due to all the valuable things I am learning and the amazing connections and experiences I keep having.

I am an avid photographer, love hiking, rock climbing, free diving, working with wildlife, scuba diving and exploring the world. In 2017, I taught environmental education in Austin, TX and then did raptor training and education in Birmingham, AL. For the summer of 2018 I led a National Geographic Student Expedition to Bail, Indonesia where I taught wildlife conservation and marine science to the students. For the 2018-19 school year, I lived in Dubai, U.A.E. as a field studies instructor teaching outdoor survival skills, backpacking trips and wildlife conservation in the middle eastern desert. Summer 2019 I was lead herpetologist for Operation Wallacea taking students out in the jungle to study the amazing reptiles and amphibians found in the Guyana Amazon basin then returned to Austin for the Fall 2019 season. Spring 2020 will find me working in one of my favorite places in the world, Florida

Mid-spring, I was approached by a good friend of mine, Ian Bremer, who was working with a streaming service start up that wanted all the content to be nature focused. Ian brought me, along our good friend, Mike in as hosts and our tv show, Serpentine was launched. Our first episode together was planned to look for speckled rattlesnake color variants and all the other amazing wildlife found in Arizona. Halfway into our trip, I was called for the Antarctica interview and got the Cargo Specialist position I wanted. I could not turn down this opportunity, so I would need to leave the Serpentine project, but not before we filmed another episode together in the Amazonian jungle in Peru.

After I left the cargo job in Denver, I went to spend the summer in Cozumel, Mexico to relax and spend some time with family, before heading down to the ice (Antarctica). It was a great opportunity to check out many of the unique places in the state of Mexico. I explored new ruins, cenotes, and cities and even led some travel groups.

I was so excited seeing the Arctic continent for the first time, and then an hour later, we could see Mt Erebus, the most active volcano in the southern hemisphere, on the left side of the airplane. When I walked through that door and got blasted with negative 30-degree temps, I did not even feel it at first, because I was so stunned by the beauty and the fact that I finally made it. I had achieved the goal of getting to my 7th continent. Antarctica is amazing.  The people down there are all like-minded, and this was so refreshing after being stuck in the USA for so long. Everyone works 60-hour weeks, and on Sundays, the off day, everyone goes hiking and exploring outside. After New Year’s, the temperatures began to get warmer. The warmest I experienced was 40 degrees.  During this time, the sea ice disappeared, and the wildlife started to arrive. I spent all my free time outside waiting for an opportunity to see emperor penguins or the endemic type c orca. I also opted to stay an additional two weeks because I wanted to witness the sunset and emperor penguin’s group together.  I was not disappointed in my decision. At the beginning of March, I flew back to New Zealand, and sadly I was not able to explore due to covid restrictions, so I headed back to the USA.

I have many different titles: naturalist, herpetologist, field scientist, environmental educator, outdoor educator and conservationist.  I do contract work all around the world doing different jobs that all revolve around the same end goal, which is conservation education to ensure that students learn how important it is to preserve the amazing wildlife and ecosystems we have on this planet.  What sets me apart from others is when I was younger, I struggled with severe learning differences and was told from certain institutions that I would be lucky to graduate high school. Thanks to the support of my parents and an amazing school in Denver, Co, I was able to develop skills to deal with these learning differences.  I am most proud of my ability to engage students of all ages and learning styles with my passion and work in environmental education to mentor and inspire our youth to care for the environment.