I was born and raised in eastern Washington. After graduating high school, I moved to the Seattle area to work, go to school, and be with my now husband. I have been there ever since.

After high school I started work in retail. As I worked my way into management, I realized my potential to grow was severely limited without furthering my education. In the summer of 2016, I started my college career at Edmonds Community College. After time and dedication, I was admitted to University of Washington (UW) in the summer of 2018. While there, I discovered my passion for history early on. I quickly fell in love with the research process and was fortunate enough to have professors that found new and interesting ways to engage students in history and research.

In one course, I was tasked with creating a website based off my research of a block on the Seattle Waterfront. This project gave me a deeper understanding of Washington State and the city of Seattle. In another course focused on Postwar Japan, I researched Japan’s pop culture mediums before, during, and after World War II. I learned how politics influences pop culture and, in turn, the power pop culture has over people’s perceptions of events. As an enthusiast of pop culture this was an impactful research project for me.

As I got more ingrained in history, I started to look for opportunities to continue exploring historical research outside of the college setting. I gravitated toward Archives and Museums. I started by volunteering at Museum of Pop Culture (MoPop) in 2019 and soon afterward at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). I also interned at the Washington State Archive (WSA) in Bellevue WA in 2020 until Covid-19 hit. Now I have a much better understanding of how these institutions operate and the value they provide to the public.

During the Covid-19 epidemic, I took the opportunity to learn web development at UW. Learning how to use tools such as; html, css, javascript, node.js, and sql allowed me to improve my ability to organize and communicate complex ideas in a more consumable environment. I quickly found ways to combine my love of history and research with my new skills in web development. As part of a class project, I created a website to host a history quiz.

After graduating from UW, I am continuing to expand my knowledge of full stack development. I am currently, working on combining the skills I learned in school with scalable cloud solutions like AWS. This very website is hosted on S3 with Route53 as my DNS. My next goal will be to build a more fully fledged out version of my history quiz onto AWS and to make it public.

When I’m not expanding my knowledge of history or programming, I can be found between the pages of a good book or trying to create interesting worlds of my own. I also have a love of movies and television and am known, among friends, as the go-to for pop culture.