I grew up in Charlotte, NC, but frequently traveled up to the Blue Ridge mountains to get my dose of fresh air. I traveled up to Vermont for college, graduating magna cum laude in 2013 with a degree in religion and Italian. Throughout my time there, I appreciated the easy access to nature, finding that taking one step off campus would give me the peace of mind I needed to keep a healthy perspective on life.

After graduating, I decided it was time to see the West and took a job working on a farm outside of Boulder, CO for the summer. Not wanting to leave this great state, where there were so many open shared spaces and the parking lots at the trailheads were always full, I moved up to Steamboat Springs for the next two winters to try my first hand at education, specifically in ski instruction. In between these two winters, I adventured off to Alaska to volunteer as an AmeriCorps intern through the Student Conservation Association (SCA). I was stationed in the bush town of King Salmon, Alaska on the Bristol Bay, inaccessible by roads and where milk cost $10 per gallon, but you can go catch a salmon in the river for free (minus the $150 non-resident fishing license). Here, I experienced a culture shock akin to what I felt when studying abroad in Italy during my college years. I worked that summer eliminating invasive weeds in various remote locations of Katmai National Park & Preserve, traveling by boat and float plane to places I am very glad exist.

I enjoyed my summer so much that I returned for a second summer, that time working as an interpretive park ranger based in the National Park itself, sharing a home with the bears and a few other employees. Here I worked with one of the most dense populations of brown bears in the world and helped others to appreciate the beauty and resources of the park as much as I did. My experience here opened up the power of nature combined with timely and meaningful education to change people’s perspectives on the world. Knowing how to introduce a subject in a way that connects it to the visitor is crucial to persuading people that it is worth protecting.

This desire of mine to foster a healthier conservation ethic in our world through education is what brought me to Teton Science Schools in Jackson, WY in January of 2016. My time here has equipped me with a systematic way of connecting and engaging students to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and encouraging the transference of this enthusiasm to conservation issues in their hometown. I believe these skills will transfer well into my summer job as a wildlife ranger in Yellowstone National Park, where I will have the opportunity to influence millions of visitors’ ideas surrounding nature and their place in it.

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I am interested in continuing a career with the NPS, and would like to eventually find a role in management protecting the parks’ natural resources. I am looking into graduate school opportunities beginning in the fall of 2017, hoping to study human attitudes toward wildlife and how these attitudes influence behavior. Understanding visitors’ fundamental beliefs about wildlife and nature will allow park rangers to better tailor wildlife safety education to the visitors’ backgrounds and thus garner more compliance, even when no one is watching. Enacting these changes is important to ensuring security of park resources for generations to come and promoting conservation goals throughout the world.