I grew up in the foothills of Shasta County, where my early years were often spent in the forests and waterways of the surrounding wildlands. I received an undergraduate degree in Geography from Humboldt State University in 2011 and began work with the National Park Service in the same year. My career goals became more focused following the 2018 fire season, when the Carr Fire burned all of Whiskeytown NRA, parts of the town I grew up in, and my home. I have found, through experience in the “trenches of land management”, that I am most interested in asking questions whose answers have direct applications to land management. It’s with enthusiasm that I’ve accepted the opportunity to pursue an MS degree with an option in Forestry Watershed & Wildland Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt. I look forward to examining questions related to ecological resilience, with a focus on the response of fuels and vegetation to high severity fire in mixed evergreen forests of the Klamath Mountains.