I have a fascination with the polar regions, their people, history, and wildlife.  Spending much of my life in Minnesota, I became familiar with and embraced the cold and continued to cultivate an interest in wilderness, particularly at high latitudes, through my recreational, professional, and academic endeavors.  Prior to moving to the Arctic I worked in Antarctica and have traveled in the Russian Arctic (Chukotka) not long after Perestroika.  In 2013, work brought me to live in the Arctic village of Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow). 

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Prior to my work in the Arctic I pursued a broad range of interests - gaining experience in such topics as plant-moose-wolf interactions on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and predator-prey interactions associated with colonial waterbird nest colony conservation and restoration.  I have radio tracked most of the world's wild population of critically endangered red wolves (Canis rufus) in eastern North Carolina for the USFWS Red Wolf Program.  And, I have worked with captive large carnivores as research assistant, animal care technicial, and interpretive naturalist at a a scientific research and education facility in Minnesota.

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Earlier in my career I followed an alternative path, during which time I worked as a product architect, developing and engineering for manufacture a variety of products in the medical, accessibility, hardware, technology, health-fitness, and consumer industries.  My job was to take ideas (often my own) from initial concept, through an iterative development-engineering-prototyping cycle, and into final manufacturing production.  This work resulted in 15 patents.  Though gratifying, this work did not fully meet my desire to "spend myself in a worthy cause", and so I entered graduate school mid-career, completing my MS in Conservation Biology (University of Minnesota) in 2009 and my PhD in Wildlife Ecology (Michigan Technological University) in 2018.