(Current CV)

I live in Seattle and I pay a voluntary monthly rent to the Duwamish Tribe through Real Rent Duwamish, in recognition of the fact that the Tribe has yet to be justly compensated for what they’ve ceded to settlers. I encourage readers to do the same if they live or work in Seattle, or to find Tribes in their area whom they can support.

I am a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA). I began my masters program with an Ecology of Infectious Marine Disease course at Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL) and ended it back at FHL, as a teaching assistant for Natural History of the Salish Sea.

My education at SMEA trained me to work effectively at the intersections of my background in environmental restoration and grassroots community advocacy. As part of my master’s degree, I was part of a team monitoring a restoration project using living shorelines techniques to create novel habitat for outmigrating juvenile salmon in Seattle’s Lower Duwamish River.

Before SMEA I was a research technician at San Francisco State University's Estuary & Ocean Science Center. I participated in salt marsh and eelgrass bed restoration work in the San Francisco Bay, and my research interests were habitat-forming submerged aquatic vegetation like seagrasses and kelps, how restoration work can bolster such ecosystems in the face of climate change, and how molecular techniques can be used to inform restoration. I am also broadly interested in water quality and soil quality, as well as in anthropogenic impacts to watersheds and marine ecosystems.

My aim is to continue working in the public sector to promote ecosystem restoration and environmental health, but in a way that is led by the values and priorities of affected communities, particularly Indigenous peoples and minority populations who bear the brunt of environmental and climate inequities.