I was born in Colorado and raised in Wyoming, spending most of my youth involved in sports, hunting and fishing, and loving the outdoors and nature.

I also had a hunger for people and places unknown to me, and was sent on a Rotary Club fellowship to Portoviejo, Ecuador for a year during high school, where I fell in love with the language and culture.

College was spent perfecting a fluency in Spanish and expanding knowledge of Latin American Studies at the University of Kansas. It was completed by study abroad at the University of Costa Rica, where I first started to explore photography.

After returning to the U.S., roughly a year was spent continuing to pursue photography while finding odd jobs to pay the bills.

A newspaper in northern Colorado offered me an unpaid internship that led to a staff position with a start up Spanish language product where I worked as a photographer and reporter. It was there that my background in language and culture had impact that led to journalism that previously had been under-reported or unknown. It also provided a foundation for writing.

In 2006, I took my first job at a daily newspaper at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Ariz.
It is my passion and pursuit to continue to develop my journalism at the highest level to the benefit of my community.