I am have a passion for understanding and reestablishing the role of fire in California’s ecological systems. Growing up in Ventura County, which is ancestral Chumash land, I saw firsthand the impacts of wildfire my community and I understand that climate change and land management strategies change the dynamic of fire regimes. I believe that nature is not some far off place that is separate from our daily lives. Rather, every choice we make impacts the Earth and there is no place on the planet completely untouched by humans. We must work as a community to care for our planet and its people.
I graduated magna cum laude from Occidental College in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology that emphasized Environmental Science and a minor in Geology. I was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa with my graduating class in 2019. While at Occidental, I received the Roberts Research Fellowship in Environmental Sciences to conduct independent research on urban plant ecology because of my drive to understand the interaction between human and plant communities. While I was earning my undergraduate degree, the Thomas Fire (2017) and Woolsey Fire (2018) burned large areas of Ventura County, strengthening my desire to better understand and mediate the connection between the land, humans, and fire.
Following graduation from Occidental, I hiked 300 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail, a capstone trip that ended with an ankle injury and a job at Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park. There, I spent three months living in a tent in the Sequoia National Park backcountry hanging out with plants. Most recently, I worked at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area where I helped set up the seed collection and banking program in their native plant restoration nursery and assisted with post-Woolsey Fire restoration. Currently, I am a first year Master of Environmental Science and Management candidate at the UCSB Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. I specialize in Conservation Planning and intend to meld human empathy with scientific understanding to inform public land management. My long-term goal is to mediate the interaction between human communities and wildland fire.
I use my watercolor and digital mixed media paintings to share the emotion of a landscape, exhibiting the sense of place lost in a photograph. Ecological knowledge and experiences from backpacking, rock climbing, and surfing are my templates and my inspiration.