I grew up in Illinois. I spent the first part of my life near the city of Chicago, until my family moved away to the small town of Lily Lake, Illinois right before I went to high school. At Burlington Central High School, I was involved with lots of extracurricular activities, including the National Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society, theatre, managing the football and wrestling teams, serving as co-captain of the academic bowl team, participating on my school's science bowl team, serving as captain of the WYSE team, and helping out with the design of my school's yearbook. I graduated in 2002 as valedictorian.

After high school, I attended college at Florida Institute of Technology on a scholarship for my B.S. in meteorology. Melbourne, Florida was quite different than the small town in the midwest that I was use to. In college, I was also very active in extracurricular activities, participating in the Residence Hall Association, the college run radio station (WCRR), taking up leadership positions in our performing arts organization (College Players) and student government, and becoming a member of our chapter of the Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society. When I learned that I enjoyed programming after taking a low level programming class, I focused my degree much more towards computational science and mathematics. I graduated summa cum laude with my B.S. in meteorology in 2006.

I moved on to a completely new area of the country for graduate school. I am nowattending the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, for my M.S. degree in meteorology. I hope to continue on to my Ph.D. when I graduate in June 2008. I currently work under Dr. John Horel on a project called the Real Time Mesoscale Analysis, which is part of the larger Analysis of Record project that will be eventually used for forecast verification by the NWS. I currently serve as the chairperson for my department's Student Advisory Committee, am a member of the graduate assembley, am a member of our student chapter of the American Meteorological Society, and also run my department's local forecast contest. I also serve on the website committee, computer technology committee, and teach 4th grade Sunday School at my church.