About Me

"Research is formalized curiosity." - Zora Neale Hurston

Curiosity is what carries me, for better or worse. When we react to our world with curiosity instead of fear or judgment, we can create waves of positive change. At times, this takes us up some steep hills, but if we maintain that spirit of interest and exploration, then stagnation and complacency can't seep in.

After a fairly unsatisfying 10 year career in restaurant management, I developed symptoms of a chronic illness that catalyzed massive changes in my life. I had to keep my body strong and healthy in order to minimize the effects of that illness. Soon, I found myself working as a Certified Personal Trainer, specializing in training older adults and pre- and postnatal people. My curiosity that drove me to find out how to heal myself helped me guide a lot of other folks on the same journey. I still work as a personal trainer through my private training company, Frame & Motion Training, LLC.

Meanwhile, I went back to college to get my BS in Biology with concentrations in Human Physiology and Cell & Molecular Biology. Along the way, I decided to pick up a minor in Computing Applications through the PINC Program, a cross-disciplinary program at SF State that teaches science students how to code in Python for machine learning.

I work in the LeBuhn Lab at SFSU as an undergraduate researcher. In our lab, we study the effects of humans on the environment, in urban, agricultural, and wilderness settings. One of our projects is a citizen science project called The Great Sunflower Project, which collects data from citizens all over North America (and hopefully, someday, the world) on pollinator service. We use this data to examine how human activities impact pollinator service, and hopefully to shed light on how we can create a more harmonious world for pollinators and humans.

In my free time, I enjoy getting outdoors to go bird watching or hiking. I play ukulele and write songs. I collect fossils and various oddities, and have a collection of antique science textbooks. I am a Master Preserver, and in the past, I taught canning and pickling classes for my local Parks & Rec department in South San Francisco. I formerly swam competitively, finishing the Alcatraz Challenge twice. A bad case of swimmers' shoulder keeps me out of the pool these days, but I still weight train and do archery.