I was raised in San José, Costa Rica, where my interests in species interactions and range dynamics were born. I received my B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Rice University after completing thesis research on the contribution of pollination patterns to creosote (Larrea tridentata) range dynamics in the Chihuahuan desert. In my doctoral research at DICE Lab, I am computationally exploring the consequences of using phenomenological models such as the competitive Lotka-Volterra to predict patterns of multispecies community assembly. In summer 2023, I will begin an experiment at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory quantifying the effects of plant-pollinator and plant-predator interactions on multispecies plant coexistence. Outside the lab I am a hiker, philosopher, poet, runner, and advocate for increasing access to science opportunities for low-income students and those facing other forms of financial instability.