Get to know me.

Originally from North Carolina, I’m equal parts Appalachian foothills girl and Carolina coast girl. After graduating from UNC Wilmington with a Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing, my options were travel with the circus and write a book delving into the lives of carnies (naturally) or go to graduate school. To my mom’s relief, I was accepted into an MFA program in Idaho.

I always thought I would end up as an immersive journalist like my idol Ted Conover, but after moving out west in pursuit of that piece of paper that dubbed me a Master, my career path turned a little more traditional. I graduated from UI in 2014 and started working for NRS—the global leader of paddlesports gear and equipment.

For nearly a decade, I’ve worked in the paddlesports industry. They say you’re considered fluent in a foreign language once you start dreaming in that language—I dream in paddling lingo.

With that being said, I couldn’t have told you the difference between a sprayskirt and a pogie when I started in the industry in 2014, and I had no idea what you did with a groover. I came into the industry as someone who had whitewater rafted a handful of times, always with a commercial outfitter, had never kayaked or been on an overnight rafting trip and although I liked the idea of stand-up paddleboarding, I grew up surfing—although never incredibly well. I was a skier-turned-snowboarder; I had hiked sections of the Appalachian Trail, camped across Alaska, and overnighted in Australia’s Blue Mountains—I was an outdoors person, but I wasn’t a paddler.  

And though I had spent the last seven years perfecting the craft of creative writing in academia, I was a talented writer, but I wasn’t a marketer.  

As I sat in that interview with NRS, I was confident that I could become both a paddler and a marketer. I applied for a position in the warehouse to get to know the brand and learn the industry from the ground up. In less than a year, I had moved into customer service and sales, and within two years I was on the marketing team. Over the next eight years, I listened, I learned, I hustled in the digital world until I became the Director of Content & Media. Within that same time frame, I dug into paddling and rafting. While I’m still not a kayaker, I am a paddler.

In college a professor once told me that reading is half of our jobs as writers. I love to read and by default, I love to learn. To claim that I’ve learned everything about the paddling industry would be an exaggeration, but I have grown tired of the industry and crave a new challenge. I’m antsy to learn a new vocabulary and excite a new audience. Let’s work together!