I have always been fascinated by people and places. My family is from Texas and Oklahoma but I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska where nature was always bigger than life. I spent hours each night just looking up at the night sky. I never felt separated from the outdoors and nature. Several close encounters with moose taught me to respect the power of nature and be aware that we share the same place. 

My father was in the US army, so we moved frequently and I lived all over the US, Europe and graduated from high school in Germany. All that moving from place to place may have been a challenge for some, but I easily adapted to each new environment. 

My nomadic life and curiosity led me to studies in behavioral sciences like psychology, sociology, even criminology to understanding how people make culture in a particular place and how that place-making impacts the local environment.

http://hort.cals.cornell.edu/news-events/turfwork.cfm  

I was not the first to go to college in my family line.  A few, generations before had attended historically black colleges in Texas. College was still a foreign concept and when I stepped into academic culture I had no focus and no idea of how to best direct my interests.  I had such fun studying the various behavioral sciences and art history but found that I was more interested in learning about the results and implications of these studies than in conducting the research myself.  So, becoming a research scientist or historian was not in my future but I did discover my talent for synthesizing and translating complex information through words and images for others to more easily understand. So, I completed my undergraduate studies in journalism and marketing and went to work in public affairs in various environmental agencies including (state government, public transit, and water reclamation).

My work in public affairs was principally public information & education to bring people together and raise their awareness about environmental issues in their community. I drafted policies, wrote articles, did public speaking, managed events and graphic communications. But it was a speech by Wes Jackson, head of the Land Institute that inspired me to head to graduate school to study environmental education. He talked about how important it was to “become native to this place” our towns, our neighborhoods and communities and to know and value the ecological capital of these places. I was already dealing directly with environmental issues in communities in my daily work but now I wanted to know more about the science in relation to these issues.

It took me a few years to make the transition back to school. It’s hard to give up making money vs no money while attending graduate school where you are creating debt. But I took what savings I had, got a student loan and from Austin, TX --I headed to Southern CT State University in New Haven, CT. It was absolutely the best decision and I found environmental education to be a natural fit for me. The highlight of my studies was the opportunity to teach and my master’s research.  My project looked at our children’s path back to nature through the biophilia hypothesis, our innate affinity for the natural world.  My research on biophila led me to consider how we design and create space and places for people, especially children that either connects them to nature or pushes nature away. 

I completed my masters in environmental education and now had a new hunger to learn more about concepts for designed places like parks, zoos, to neighborhoods and communities. Cornell University awarded me a fellowship to pursue a master’s in the field of landscape architecture where I learned the visual language of landscapes and developed my primary way of seeing and knowing the world through patterns and symbols (maps, diagrams, graphics, photos, etc).  Visual thinking has been so beneficial in my marketing and communications work with print and web communications for citizen science and education outreach. 

I am a communications professional with diverse interests and skills, but environmental education is my sphere of action and service. So, if you have a diversity of interests, a career path in communications and marketing could be a great way to satisfy your curiosity in so many things but allow you to develop a focused skill set in writing, speaking, and design that can be applied to any field of study or industry.