Early on in my college career at Elmhurst University, one of my professors recommended that I take a GIS class, so I took my first GIS class the next semester, and the rest is history. I graduated with a B.S. in Environmental Studies, and another GIS.

As I was wrapping up my senior capstone project, I received a job offer from the city of North Las Vegas (CNLV) to be a part of their GIS team, and gratefully accepted. There, I acquired a vast amount of knowledge, including how to lead a project, time management, curating a database cooperatively, communicating with stakeholders, the functions of a city, supervising and training, and much more. Perhaps most relevantly, I was able to solidify the GIS lessons I learned in school, becoming extremely capable at utilizing the ESRI suite (ArcGIS Pro, ArcDesktop, Arc Catalog, etc.), as well as learning new software, such as AutoCAD Map 3D.

After three summers in the Vegas heat, I was conveniently offered a job back in Illinois with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) as a part of their geospatial tech support, officially called the Business Tool Specialist. Here, the scale and operations were much different than what I was used to with CNLV. I was in charge of assisting in the usage of an enormous ArcGIS Online portal that hundreds of people were using simultaneously. I did everything from training new employees how to use it, responded to tickets via a ticketing system, or even just answering questions via direct messages. I also began my Python coding journey here, taking an ESRI led Python course.

On a more personal note, I love listening to vinyl (especially Billy Joel), learning Japanese (こんにちは!), and hiking (all the pictures on this page are pictures I took out on hikes!).