Based in Portland, ME, I serve as the Stewardship Manager with the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust (CELT). I help care for the land that CELT has protected, over 850 acres in Cape Elizabeth, Maine with miles of public trails through forested, field, wetland, and coastal ecosystems.

I grew up in Manchester, MA, graduating from Manchester Essex Regional High School in 2006. I went to Trinity College – Hartford, where I earned a Biology major, Religion minor, and varsity rowing gold medals. My studies started in Neuroscience, then the semester with SFS confirmed my broader interest in ecology, which all worked into a Biology major.

After college, I guided outdoor education programs in NH, followed by three years of social work in New Haven, CT which focused on youth education and community resilience. In fall 2014, I rode my bike across the US with two others (all of us having guided multi-day cycling trips from NH), witnessing more of this wide country.

I moved to Sonoma County, CA in 2015 to serve as Camp Director for 2.5 years, followed by Lyft driving, house-sitting, and zip-line canopy tours in the coastal redwoods. I sought a steadier career path that related to my interest of actively caring for the outdoors, so returned to school in 2019 for a Master of Environmental Management degree from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University in Durham, NC. This confirmed my interest in land trusts: organizations that blend the mission of environmental conservation with societal practicality of real estate and public access. I graduated with a focus in Ecosystem Science and Conservation and the Geospatial Analysis Certificate.

I have been in Maine since fall 2021 and appreciate that this career track uses a range of skillsets I’ve acquired from past experiences, e.g., nonviolent communication and conflict management to GIS data organization and plant identification.

Other joys include live music, sailing, ski days, trivia nights, mountaineering, biking through the city, and running in all seasons.

Favorite SFS Memory: Being amidst so much exotic (to me) wildlife. Hearing loud bird calls every morning, living somewhere where we had to check our shoes for creatures before putting them on in the morning, and seeing eyeshine from so many huntsman spiders while we walked back to the cabins each night.

I remember one day there was a ~5-meter-long amethystine python nearby, so we all ran to see it up close — one of the incredibly dangerous yet unaggressive if unprovoked beautiful animals of Australia.