I currently serve as the Director of Fellowships & Grants at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. I advise students and alumni through the process of applying to nationally and internationally competitive fellowship and grant opportunities. Most importantly, I help students think critically about their lives, develop an awareness of their contributions to their local (or even global) community, cultivate self-reflection, and explore adventurous opportunities with both intentionality and curiosity. 

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I began my journey in higher education as a Bill & Melinda Gates Scholar at Pomona College, where I took full advantage of the liberal arts curriculum and chased my curiosity. I learned to think like a naturalist, appreciate the poetic magnificence of French literature, speak in Middle English, explore the cultural underpinnings of religious traditions, perform in a Balinese gamelan ensemble, consider Kulturlandschaften from a German/European and American perspective, and understand the impact of the Bracero program on my own family history. I also invested my time in a variety of research endeavors that ultimately compelled me to explore graduate school options (See my 'Research / Undergraduate Projects' section for more details).

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After a year as a sea turtle researcher and a marine education fellow, I pursued a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Virginia Tech in the lab of Dr. Ignacio Moore. My research integrated field, lab, and bioinformatic approaches to explore the relationship between mating behavior and the microbiome in a socially monogamous avian species. Overall, my graduate work gave me the opportunities to pursue my interests in animal behavior, ecology, microbial ecology, and endocrinology, as well as to mentor undergraduates and fellow graduate students in fellowship and grant writing, and field and lab research.

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After my Ph.D., I was awarded an NSF "Rules-of-Life" Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology to pursue research in the lab of Dr. Ann Tate at Vanderbilt University. My research focused on investigating the causes and consequences of diverse parasite transmission modes for both parasite and host fitness, using evolutionary immunology and a mathematical modeling approach.