This is a collection of various professional pursuits: archaeology, building communities of practice in open research data policy, and dabbles in software engineering.
There will be some content but in the interim have a look at my reasonably up-to-date resume
As an archaeologist I studied ancient human-environment interactions, sustainability and resilience, and agricultural risk management through the lens of food (i.e., foodways). I conducted 10 years of field research in the New World tropical Maya culture area of Yucatán, Mexico and Guatemala, and received funding from the US National Science Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, and Boston University.
I was once featured in a National Geographic documentary.
Lost World of the Maya (full episode)
Check me out in this educational clip brushing Maya teeth
ORCID profile
PhD Dissertation: Prehispanic Maya foodways: archaeological and microbotanical evidence from Escalera al Cielo, Yucatan, Mexico (open access link)
Publications
After completing a PhD, I became a Product Manager at the University of California Office of the President where I built data repositories, communities of practice around open data policy, and coached researchers in best practices for research data management. I received a US National Science Foundation grant to create machine-actionable data management plans and established a partnership with the UK Digital Curation Centre to coordinate the effort across global open data policies.
Eventually I decided to take a method acting approach and learn how to build things myself. I completed a full-stack software engineering bootcamp at Rithm School that included an internship where I discovered that I'm a generalist at heart and enjoy solving human problems more than technical ones. From there I ventured into technical consulting and engineering project management roles at startups.