About Me

I’m a freelance science and environmental reporter based in the Midwest. I'm passionate about telling nuanced stories focused on humanity's relationship with the natural world, the trials and tribulations of scientists striving to understand our changing climate and, more generally, science as a cultural endeavor (and its complicated history).

I’ve reported print and digital science feature stories for National Geographic, Scientific American, Undark, Hakai, Discover, Sierra, Smithsonian, Science and MIT Technology Review. To tell the story of our rapidly changing world, I've followed scientists across the world—into the fjords of Chilean Patagonian in search of cold-water corals, onboard Quinault Nation crab fishing boats in coastal Washington, around soybean farms in rural Iowa and salt marshes on the Chesapeake Bay, into the freezers of ice core labs in Oregon and Switzerland and through tsunami inundation zones in Alaska.

I'm drawn to science done at the edge, both of what we know and literally in places it's difficult for even the most dogged researchers to reach (physically, and in terms of what science institutions and funding structures are set up to support)—Antarctica, Alaska, remote fjordlands, the deep sea—places changing rapidly due to human activity where science is critical but incredibly hard to do.

I also work as an audio producer for NASA’s flagship agency podcast, Curious Universe. Before joining NASA's audio team, I was a production intern for WBEZ, Chicago Public Media, where I produced segments focused on the environment for Reset, the station's two-hour daily news show. I also worked as a freelance U.S. correspondent for German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle's environmental podcast, Living Planet. I got my start in audio journalism at my hometown public radio station, WVIK, Quad Cities NPR. I have a master's degree in science journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School.

I was the Pulitzer Center‘s 2022 Climate Science reporting fellow, and they've generously supported my travel and field reporting several times since through grants. I've given talks on my reporting at conferences and webinars, including at COP28 in Dubai. I was also a finalist for the 2023 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards in the Student Journalist of the Year category. My NASA production work has won two Webby Awards, has been a Signal Awards finalist and won honorable mention in the National Association of Science Writers Best Institutional Writing awards' longform category.

My reporting has been republished in The Atlantic, Slate, Mother Jones, Ars Technica and Popular Science. My work has been covered by Iowa Public Radio, Interlochen Public Radio/Chicago Public Media, WHBF and a variety of neat newsletters.

I trace my love of storytelling to my undergraduate background in environmental science and cultural anthropology — a social science discipline that straddles the boundary between the sciences and the humanities and attempts to explain the complexities of our world through grounded, personal stories. My one academic publication (before I became a journalist) is an ethnography of urban parks published in Columbia University's Consilience journal. Whenever I can, I try to bring ethnographic research, a sense of awe and wonder and that core anthropologic ethos to "make the familiar strange and the strange familiar," to my work.

I'm a proud member of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) and Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ).