I was born and raised in Austin, Texas and completed my Bachelor's degree at Texas A&M University-Galveston. My intrigue with tortoise beetles (Cassidines) began while I was hiking through the mountains of La Fortuna, Panama during a tropical ecology field course as a first year graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I was immediately enamored by the striking coloration of these insects and my fascination by these "living jewels" has only grown since then.  I'm also into consuming too much reality tv, exploring new places, taking an obnoxious number of photos of my cats, red wines, and chocolatey stouts.