I’m originally from Delaware and always had an interest in working with animals when I was older. I thought the only way to do this was to become a veterinarian. I didn’t really know any scientists when I was younger, and I had no idea what conservation biologists even did.
I went to Wilkes University in Pennsylvania for college and majored in biology with a minor in International Relations. I decided to study abroad in South Africa for a semester and loved it! I wanted to stay in Africa longer and decided to volunteer at a nature reserve in Zimbabwe. This was where I first fell in love with wildlife and conservation biology. I was particularly interested in African elephants and decided to continue my education after my undergraduate degree at Western Kentucky University for my Master’s degree studying elephant behavior at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I then went on to work at the Toledo Zoo where I met my first snow leopard.
I decided to go back to school at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh to get my PhD so I could learn more about using science to save animals at-risk for extinction, like the snow leopard. I started working with other wildlife researchers studying snow leopards in China in the summer of 2017, then returned in the summer of 2018 and winter of 2019.
