I was born and raised in the Philadelphia, PA area near Valley Forge. I went to college at the University of Richmond, VA where I majored in math. I moved to the Washington, D.C. area after college and worked for a few companies that specialized in microwave systems engineering and communications software for the government. After a while, I started taking evening classes at Northern Virginia Community College to get undergraduate science credits so I could transfer to Virginia Tech. There, I applied to graduate programs where I majored in entomology and public administration. That's when I officially went into the education field, working as a faculty member at Virginia Tech and later at the University of Arizona. In 2017, I began teaching at Pima Community College in the math and biology departments.