I like to make maps -- especially when it means I get to play with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript!
In case you're interested in learning more about me than I could fit on my resume , I created this resumap to provide more context. You won't find lists of degrees or skills here, but you will learn a little more about who I am.
But I call 'em Mom & Dad. I grew up in a no stoplight town in Wisconsin where my parents own a wholesale bakery. My first job was cracking eggs into a bucket at age five. From middle school until I left Wisconsin in 2017, I helped them sell their products at the local farmers' market.
Even though I live on the East Coast, now, I still contribute in my own way. I built their website in 2018 and I continue to maintain it for them.
My first year of college was in Milwaukee. This is where I volunteered with an organization to end human trafficking, which opened my eyes to all the factors that can contribute to and alleviate human suffering. I started to turn my academic focus towards population health, economics, and social justice issues.
After a year in Milwaukee, I transferred to UW-Madison. I got more involved with social justice groups, like WISPIRG, and even got a chance to develop and lead my own organization: "Just Food". I got my first taste of leadership as I oversaw twenty interns. I coached them through coalition building and lobbying campus officials to increase their fair trade and local food products in the food halls. I bounced around between majors for awhile, and I landed on three: International Studies, Political Science, and Languages & Cultures of Asia. I also minored in Global Health.
I spent my last semester as a UW-Madison student studying abroad in Pune, India. While there, I interned at Parvati Swayamrojgar Yojana, a health microinsurance organization. For my internship, I spent my days interviewing participants of the microinsurance program to learn how they felt about their access to healthcare. At the end of the summer, I provided a summary of findings to the directors of the program.
About a month after I returned from India, I married the love of my life in a surprise wedding ceremony. The wedding was in a barn near our shared hometown.
For two years after graduating, I worked as a teller at UW Credit Union. While there, I helped to train new tellers, held the responsibility of being "vault teller" (i.e., balancing the vault of cash every night), and I met some people who became my best friends. I knew all along that working in finance wasn't for me long-term, but I wouldn't trade my time at UW Credit Union for anything.
From UW Credit Union, I moved a few blocks to the west and began a program to learn GIS and Cartography at UW-Madison. I saw GIS as a way to make myself marketable in the public health field (and I also love maps).
Becoming a part of the UW-Madison Geography family was one of the best choices I've ever made. Not only did I meet some incredible people, but I learned so much more than I bargained for. Now I have programming, web design, data viz, graphic design, and spatial statistics in my toolbox.
In 2017, my husband and I packed our belongings and headed out east for New Haven, where an MPH program was waiting for me and a good job at Yale was waiting for him.
During the summer of 2018, I interned at the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner up in Farmington, Connecticut. I pored over toxicology, autopsy, and investigative reports to understand the circumstances that led to each opioid-related fatality in Connecticut in 2017. I later did my thesis on the spatiotemporal distribution of opioid-involved fatal overdoses in Connecticut from 2009-2017.
After graduating from the Yale School of Public Health, I worked at the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness as their GIS & Data Visualization Specialist. I learned so much about creating interactive maps and dashboards and enjoyed working in the East Village, although my two-hour (one way) commute from Norwalk, CT wasn't ideal.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was eager to get involved with work related to COVID-19. Since 2020, I have been working remotely for the Wisconsin Department of Health as a Public Health Data Scientist. I have streamlined the data processing for their public-facing data dashboards and am involved in the effort to equitably distribute vaccine throughout Wisconsin. My exact role is pretty fluid based on what they need and it will continue to evolve. I absolutely love what I do and am excited to continue growing as a professional at the intersection of GIS, data science, visualization, and epidemiology.