Raised in Iowa, I was that little girl with a wild imagination and deep love for all things nature. From saving abandoned kittens, begging my parents to adopt that puppy, having an entire zoo as my invisible “friends,” to climbing trees, and I have to say… not a lot has changed! 

During High School, I developed a deep love of learning and a wide range of interests. I was just as happy cheerleading and hurdling as I was singing or working on a piece of art. Not to mention my growing obsession with fish keeping, reading, and rearranging my room. I’ll never forget the day a box of live fish was delivered to the house. I thought my mother was going to kill me!

After graduation, I began to develop a deep sense that there was something out there waiting for me… something that I wasn’t going to find in Iowa. I tried to ignore it, I really did, but the feeling became unbearable and I decided to set out on a new adventure to see what I could find out in the great unknown. 

Moving to Las Vegas was a significant leap of faith that, I can say with absolute certainty, changed the tide of my destiny. 

I enrolled at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where I met two of my best friends, Stephanie and Ashleigh. And if you’ve ever been to Las Vegas, you know you don’t need a wild imagination to realize we had a heap of fun together. We’ll just leave it at that. After graduation, we all went our separate ways, but one thing remained the same—our deep love for each other. They are genuinely the sisters I always wish I had. So, Steph went off to graduate school, Ashleigh took on a full-time job and me? Well… 

My next chapter whisked me off to Tempe, Arizona, where I completed my Masters of Counseling degree at ASU. It all seemed so simple at the time, but this is yet another plot twist. Bom Bom BOM!!! After working a short stint in Community Mental Health… I knew that wasn’t my jam. I began searching for another career path and that’s when the stars aligned and Higher Education and the W. P. Carey School of Business made my little nerd heart skip a beat. 

I started working for WPC back in September 2013, and have been with them ever since. While working my way up within the organization, I completed another master’s degree in Education Policy and a Graduate Certificate in Institutional Research and Policy Analysis. Did I mention I’m a nerd? And now, I work as the Director of Academic Advising, which supports our ASU Online, Polytechnic, and West Campus Advising teams. If you had told me I’d be typing the previous sentence back when I started on that sunny September day, I would have died of laughter. I never saw this coming, yet, I couldn’t be happier or more proud of the team we’ve built. 

What happens next? Well, friend, your guess is as good as mine. What I can say is that I am SO glad that our paths have crossed, that I get to be marrying the love of my life, and that, if nothing else, I am in for one heck of an adventure.