Reporter. Editor. Researcher. Writer.
I spent my earliest years exploring tangles of scrub oak, manzanita, and blackberry brambles behind our home in the Oakland hills. In the years since, I’ve spend at least as much time surveying urban landscapes and have, at different times, called New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, London, Phoenix, and Hershey “home.” (One of these things, admittedly, is not like the others. And it’s true—at times the air there really does smell like chocolate!)
After receiving my undergraduate degree in biology, I thought I was squarely on the path toward conservation science. But numerous experiences in the lab — in everything from botany to radio telemetry, marine toxicology to parrot cognition — taught me that I have no patience for delayed gratification. That’s when I turned to journalism. Today, my reporting often feels equally peripatetic, as I jump from migraine therapies to dangerous knockoff car seats to polypharmacy in autism (this last one received a national award from the NIHCM Foundation). My recent work has focused, in large part, on all facets of the brain — neuroscience, neurology, psychology, and where these intersect.
My work has appeared in The Washington Post, Nature, NPR.com, The Christian Science Monitor, Aeon, The Economist, and many other publications. I have worked on staff at O Magazine, Medscape, and Discover magazine, and as a contributing editor for bioGraphic, SAPIENS, and Nature Outlook. (If you’re curious, you can find my resume here.) More than anything, I like to tell a good story. Science is full of amazing stories.
Photo credit: Sarah Quiara
Banner illustration: Pyramidal neuron drawing, by Ramón y Cajal (courtesy Greg Goebel via CC)