I haven’t always wanted to work in a museum. As a matter of fact, my 14-year-old self would have never even dreamed of it. Growing up I had three main interests: photography, wildlife and history. I started my college career in New York, the ‘Big Apple’, where I studied photography with dreams of one day traveling the world as a wildlife photographer. That was the fall of 2009, at the same time I found out my sister, Courtney, had cancer.

The next semester I moved back to Florida to be with my family and sister as she traveled the winding road of cancer treatment. Over the next year, as my sister’s health degraded, all I could think about was how I wish I could save her or how I would preserve her memory when the time came. In November 2010 that time came. Courtney’s battle inspired me to do more than just photography, more than just documenting. I want to preserve knowledge and history. I want preserve people and make their stories known. Their stories are our history.

After my sister passed away, I knew I had to make a drastic change. So after a year at a community college in Florida, I moved to Montana, a place where I didn’t know a single person. Montana, a place where I had only ever been once before …show more content…
A small county museum, ‘The Fort’ offered and immense collection spanning multiple buildings and multiple acres, including a few buildings. It was here that I truly got my first “taste” of the museum world beyond the classroom. I successfully inventoried about 75% of the textiles collections at Fort Missoula, some of which had no documentation other than an accession number. After encountering much of the collection without proper documentation, I realized that not only was my place in a museum, but a small local museum. This museum didn’t have the resources like the Smithsonian, and neither do many museums throughout the