I’m a lifelong plant lover and the curator of the Ada Hayden Herbarium at Iowa State University (ISC, IA, ISTC). I have a recent Ph.D. from Ken Sytsma’s lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; my research is on the systematics of the Potentilla breweri complex, a fascinating little group of strawberry-like high-mountain wildflowers from the western United States.

My love of botany is quite literally older than my conscious memory. (I have photos of myself engrossed in my backyard flora from before I have actual memories.) I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and earned my B.Sc. at the Ohio State University. After graduating, I moved to Boise, Idaho. There, I supervised the SWITCH digitization project, an NSF-funded initiative to digitize the herbaria of the College of Idaho, Boise State University, and several land-management agency offices. After finishing the SWITCH project in 2015, I began my doctoral studies. I defended my Ph.D. in August 2025. More details of my thesis research are available here, and the full thesis can be found here.

In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, botanical illustration, cooking, board games, singing, reading and writing science fiction, and gardening. I have soft spots for farmers’ markets, action movies, jumping spiders, and Ursula K. LeGuin.