I have scuba-dived for a long time—always that kid with sandy feet and salty hair. I remember going to the Similan Islands in Thailand with my mom and chemistry teacher in high school, goggling at manta rays and beautiful coral gardens for a week straight. It felt like ‘Finding Nemo’ in real life, a surreal experience that has always stuck. It just so happened that after college at Princeton, I returned to Thailand on a Princeton in Asia teaching fellowship and began dive-guiding on weekends at the same exact place I had gone to when I was a kid. Only, this time, it was a coral graveyard. 

In the water, and on my boat ride home, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, we really have a huge impact on the world.’ This was my personal ‘aha’ moment. After teaching in Thailand, I moved to Ethiopia to conduct behavioral fieldwork on gelada monkeys, an Old-World primate species endemic to the Ethiopian highlands and valleys and nowhere else in the world. I lived in a tent for a year, immersed in the lives of my gelada herd — Jane Goodall style, recording everything the monkeys did: what they ate, who they interacted with, where they ranged, and more. That year invigorated me to pursue the applied policy side of conservation research — here at SPIA as a Ph.D. student. On-the-ground behavioral fieldwork is fundamental to research and fantastic fun, but change at scale needs interdisciplinary policy support to truly make a difference and impact the world. I’m here hoping to get that ability.