ABOUT ME
I am dedicated to uncovering and sharing the wonders and mysteries of nature — and all that it's up against. My work has appeared in dozens of publications including National Geographic, Grist and High Country News. I love a beautiful sentence as much as a beautiful tree; I think stories can be as powerful as our mountains and oceans.
I currently work as a science writer and editor at Washington Sea Grant, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program based at the University of Washington that focuses on marine research, education and outreach.
I am also slowly working on a memoir about my biggest claim to fame: completing the “seven summits” (the highest mountain on each continent) in 2007 at the age of 18. At that time, I was the youngest person to have done so — you can find me in the 2009 and 2012 editions of the Guinness Book of World Records. I have given talks about what it was like to be a teenage mountaineer to audiences such as Maria Shriver's Conference on Women, Science Online Teen, and TEDx Midwest youth. Read my Everest blog, which has been re-published in K–12 textbooks across the world, here.
Previously, I was a science correspondent for the Seattle news site Crosscut and a contributor for the outdoor adventure site RootsRated, where I covered destinations from Utah to Patagonia. Before that, I was a fellow at the environmental news site Grist; the position brought me to live in Seattle, which then became my dream city. I moved here in 2014 from Washington, D.C., where I worked as a research assistant to journalist Robert Draper. In that role, I helped with research for features that appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The New Republic, and contributed in-the-field reporting to both the magazine and the multimedia components for National Geographic’s story "The Last Chase," which won the 2014 Ellie National Magazine award for multimedia.
I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in earth systems from Stanford University. While there, I also got my hands dirty with scientific fieldwork in Chilean Patagonia, the Peruvian Amazon, the Tropical Pacific, and a summer of scuba diving in Monterey Bay — and fell in love with journalism largely thanks to mentor Tom Hayden and an internship at the Santa Cruz Weekly.
I am dedicated to uncovering and sharing the wonders and mysteries of nature — and all that it's up against. My work has appeared in dozens of publications including National Geographic, Grist and High Country News. I love a beautiful sentence as much as a beautiful tree; I think stories can be as powerful as our mountains and oceans.
I currently work as a science writer and editor at Washington Sea Grant, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program based at the University of Washington that focuses on marine research, education and outreach.
I am also slowly working on a memoir about my biggest claim to fame: completing the “seven summits” (the highest mountain on each continent) in 2007 at the age of 18. At that time, I was the youngest person to have done so — you can find me in the 2009 and 2012 editions of the Guinness Book of World Records. I have given talks about what it was like to be a teenage mountaineer to audiences such as Maria Shriver's Conference on Women, Science Online Teen, and TEDx Midwest youth. Read my Everest blog, which has been re-published in K–12 textbooks across the world, here.
Previously, I was a science correspondent for the Seattle news site Crosscut and a contributor for the outdoor adventure site RootsRated, where I covered destinations from Utah to Patagonia. Before that, I was a fellow at the environmental news site Grist; the position brought me to live in Seattle, which then became my dream city. I moved here in 2014 from Washington, D.C., where I worked as a research assistant to journalist Robert Draper. In that role, I helped with research for features that appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The New Republic, and contributed in-the-field reporting to both the magazine and the multimedia components for National Geographic’s story "The Last Chase," which won the 2014 Ellie National Magazine award for multimedia.
I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in earth systems from Stanford University. While there, I also got my hands dirty with scientific fieldwork in Chilean Patagonia, the Peruvian Amazon, the Tropical Pacific, and a summer of scuba diving in Monterey Bay — and fell in love with journalism largely thanks to mentor Tom Hayden and an internship at the Santa Cruz Weekly.