I was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been involved in as many creative outlets as I could find. As a child, I studied piano, ballet, and watercolor painting. As a teenager, my interests expanded into drums, breakdancing, and performing in plays, musicals, and music videos. Through it all, singing has always been my favorite art form. I spent over ten years in professional voice training, which led to receiving the Utah Vocal Performance Sterling Scholar award my senior year of high school.

I’m so lucky to have parents who taught me the value of education. High school was where I developed a deep love for learning and hard work . That love deepened even further during a summer study abroad program focused on European history, where I traveled through Wales, Ireland, England, and France. Visiting museums, historic sites, and works of art abroad sparked a lasting love for travel and cultural exploration. My incredible parents also gave me countless opportunities to explore our home state of Utah growing up. They took me to national parks, ghost towns, museums, and planetariums regularly—teaching me the importance of cultural organizations in our own community.

After high school, I served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Dominican Republic, a place I’ve been lucky to return to several times since. Each visit has deepened my appreciation for the country, its people, and its culture. I later attended Southern Utah University, where I graduated from the Honors College with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Art History, along with minors in Spanish and Museum Studies. I received the Art History Top Graduate Award, which I owe in large part to the mentorship of Dr. Andy Kent-Marvick.

During my undergraduate years, I was lucky to get a wide range of work experience. I worked as a para-educator, a hotel group manager and concierge, the art installation liaison for the Salt Lake City Airport renovation, and a youth camp counselor in both San Diego, California and Ephraim, Utah. Of all these experiences, camp counseling remains one of my favorites thanks to the best coworker I’ve ever had—an incredibly kind and funny co-counselor, who I later convinced to marry me.

Halfway through my degree, I began working at the Southern Utah Museum of Art as a Learning and Engagement Assistant, where I helped design and lead educational tours and community programming. My time there led me to pursue an MFA in Arts Administration at SUU. SUMA kindly transitioned me into my current role as their Collections Associate.

When I'm not at school or work, I'm spending time with my sweet husband or keeping up with art of some kind—these days that looks like baking, guitar playing, and oil painting. After graduate school, I hope to pursue a doctorate in the humanities and continue building a career centered on the ways art and history help us better understand the world.