I’m a Salish Sea-based ecologist who is broadly interested in how foundation species (abundant species that generate biogenic habitat) and their associated communities will fare in the face of ongoing climate change. My journey to my current research interests has been circuitous, to say the least. I started out volunteering in an analytical chemistry lab at the University of Victoria during my second year of studies, which launched me into a grab-bag of chemical research for the rest of my undergraduate degree. During this period, I branched out to work in solar materials, organometallic, and organic synthetic chemistry. Now, I do none of these things. After taking a very fun marine-focused invertebrates elective, I rather spontaneously applied for field school at Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, where I got stoked on the sea. There, I met Dr. Christopher Harley from the University of British Columbia, and managed to finagle my way into a PhD program under his supervision, where my research examined how marine invertebrate species like oysters, barnacles, and mussels (and their associated meiofauna) respond to thermal stress. I recently took a year “off” to work with A Rocha Canada doing riparian restoration, wildflower meadow naturalization, and species-at-risk monitoring in the Tatalu (Little Campbell) watershed in South Surrey. Now, I am back in academia doing a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Anne Salomon at Simon Fraser University. There, I am looking at the effect of temperature on canopy kelp performance along the BC coast and thinking more generally about constraints on both kelp and its role in the Blue Economy. When not at work, I spend my time training for triathlons, playing board games, knitting, and appreciating plants and birds.