I was born and raised in a small town in south-western Michigan. After high school I traveled around a bit and fell in love with traveling and taking photographs. Soon after I started the photography program at Northern Michigan University and recieved my Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2002.
For the next five years, I worked seasonally from spring to fall in Yosemite National Park; leaving for the winters to travel, bike tour, climb, and seek adventure. During my time in Yosemite I was employeed a couple seasons with the National Park Service as a Pysical Science Technician. It was then I became interested in spatial sciences and Geogrphical Information Systems (GIS). In the spring of 2007, I started the GIS certificate program at Humboldt State University, and continued on to recieve my Masters of Science in GIS in 2012.
During my years as a GIS Analyst I also became interested in website design and development. I built a few websites for small companies, special districts, and also helped build a couple small javascript applications.