With a background as an academic geologist, I now investigate stories where we can better understand recent events by applying knowledge of the natural world. I combine Earth science expertise with data and image analysis to uncover patterns, detect shifts, and reveal how human activity intersects with environmental systems — and how those systems, in turn, can offer clues about what people are doing. Whether it’s using satellite imagery of vegetation to track land rights in conflict zones or tracing the illegal export of mining byproducts, I aim to tell data-rich stories that connect the technical to the urgent. I work especially well in collaboration with investigative journalists, grounding reporting in scientific evidence to strengthen stories built through source development.
Shifting from studying ancient animals and environments in 500 million year old rocks to trying to bring accountability to current events may seem like a random, wholesale pivot, but I find that thinking like a geologist gives me a unique and apt approach. Geology famously is a data-poor science where we try to piece together shreds of imperfectly preserved evidence that we find in mountainsides to produce narratives that may answer big questions about how life, climate, and environments have evolved over millenia. And so on top of directly using my knowledge of the Earth system to give perspective on current events, I constantly use my background when thinking about the best way to coherently point disparate datasets (often creating new ones) towards a satisfying answer.
