This page tells a little more about me and my journey into biostatistics.

The role of a biostatistician is largely the role of the storyteller, in that the biostatistician has the opportunity to communicate and interpret the stories represented by data. And I have been steeped in storytelling since I was a little girl – I am from the rolling hills of middle Tennessee, around the Nashville metro area. I grew up listening to country music and having family meals every Sunday with my parents & grandparents after church. Good country music and good family conversations are all centered on stories - stories that bring people together and communicate a message.

When I was in high school, the stories began to include numbers. I had two fantastic math teachers in high school who inspired me to see the beauty of math. With this motivation, I majored in math at Wheaton College, a liberal arts school in the Chicago area. During my junior year at Wheaton, a professor who knew I loved applying math to solve real-world problems recommended that I apply for a Summer in Biostatistics (SIB) program. I had never heard of biostatistics, but I applied and was accepted to the SIB program hosted by the University of Iowa. I spent the summer of 2018 in Iowa doing a research project that involved using machine learning methods to analyze image data from lung cancer screening. I absolutely loved it – the work challenged my thinking, and the application to the health sciences was deeply motivating. I returned to U. Iowa Biostatistics to start a Master’s program in the fall of 2019, and in May of 2025 I graduated with my Ph.D.

As of the fall of 2025, I have started my career as a biostatistician at Merck.