I am a California native and attended UCLA for my undergraduate studies. I intended to study marine biology, but I took Dr. Owen Witte’s class in molecular/cellular biology and knew I wanted to learn more about the field and how this knowledge could be used to develop therapies to treat cancer. I graduated with a degree in biology from UCLA and attended California State University, Dominguez Hills for my Master’s degree in molecular biology, where I studied retrotransposons in sea urchins in Dr. John Robert’s lab. I left the comfort of California and began my Ph.D. studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.