Long story short... After graduating University with a degree in biology, and failing to get my dream job (at the time) as a park ranger, I made a leap and decided to start my own IT consulting company. I was always very good with computers and with people. As a back-up to my preferred career path, I had been attending night school for IT specialists during the final year of my undergrad. I started small with residential clients but within a year I was building small and medium size companies computer and telephone networks and dealing with their day to day IT needs. It got a bit more advanced than that in the following years. 

After a couple years of daydreaming about following my true calling, I decided to make the switch back to marine science. I enrolled in a Masters of Marine Biology degree at James Cook University, QLD, Australia and it was the best decision I ever made. 

During the course of my degree I became the president of the JCU dive club and made lifelong friends for whom I have volunteered over 9 months of my time in the field. I volunteered for James Cook University and University of Queensland PhD candidates' and Post Docs' projects, as well as multiple Australian Institute of Marine Science LTMP trips (long term monitoring project). Additionally, I undertook two of my own independent research projects. One under the guidance of Dr. Simon Brandl and Dr. David Bellwood and the 2nd with Dr. Justin Rizzari, Dr. Ashley Frisch and Dr. Andrew Hoey . I was honored to be made co-author on three of the projects I worked on as an assistant researcher, and have recently gotten one of my own papers published (co-authored with Simon Brandl). Since completing my masters degree, I have been invited to participate on multiple projects as a co-author or skipper and have completed my ADAS commercial scuba diver training, coxswains NC 1 skippers training and I am now currently working towards my Master <24 NC while I work as a small vessel skipper (<12m), large vessel mate, freelance researcher, and dive supervisor. 

My aim is to be a research scientist/ field technician and spend as much time as I can in the field. Thank you for considering me!