My earth science origin story began growing up in south Louisiana where in the early 2000s it seemed like we had a brush with a major hurricane every year. It was Katrina in 2005 though that cemented my interests in everything climate, and I have remained on that path since.

During undergrad at LSU I found out about the field of “paleotempestology” and instantly joined a project to reconstruct Louisiana hurricane landfalls over the past 500 years using storm surge deposits. This got me hooked on paleoclimate! In my graduate studies at Columbia, I expanded my timescale of focus from the common era to the Pleistocene and both deepened and shared my grasp of geochemical proxies for ocean conditions such as temperature, salinity, and even density in the Western Pacific.

Since finishing my Ph.D. I have remained connected to the paleoclimate world while also engaging with the burgeoning “carbon dioxide removal” ecosystem. Long-term, big-picture, geochemical thinking from earth scientists is crucial in both the critical evaluation and potential growth of this ecosystem, and more and more of us are entering it. I want to use my unique combination of perspectives and expertise to: 1) inform and build bridges between all earth science disciplines and climate solutions, and 2) train the next generation of earth scientists to be climate solvers, paleoclimatologists, and everything in between.