Hi!  I’m glad you’re here to find out more about me. I’ll start in the present, go back to the past, and finish where I see myself in the future.

As adults in modern society, much of our identity is derived from our work (Stolzoff, 2023). It’s one of the first questions when we meet someone:  what do you do?  This question doesn’t mean what do you like to do for fun, what do you do with your weekends, or who do you spend time caring for. It means what do you do for work; how do you earn money?  I always assumed I would work.  I didn’t want to depend on family or a partner for an income. I was raised that being independent was important for everyone, especially strong women. 

Current Status
Being a stay-at-home mom just isn’t a role I identify with, even after doing it for over a year and a half. It’s just my current status, brought on by circumstances I’ll explain next. It’s not who I am. It’s not the answer to the question.

At the same time, it’s a role I value. I’m glad I’m able to pick up my kid after school and take him to whichever activity is happening that day. This summer I’ll be available to take him to a variety of day camps and two weeks of overnight camp. For two of the weeks, he will have swimming lessons for 45 minutes in the middle of the morning. I can make all that happen without taking time off from work or arranging my meeting schedule around it. It’s a privilege to be able to be there for him, even though he can almost take care of himself. I don’t think I would have done well as a full time mom to a baby or toddler, but now that he can do things, most of the time, he’s pretty fun to be around. When I get professionally restless and frustrated with the lack of definition in my future, I try to remind myself to soak it all in and be present while I can. I’m sure I’ll blink, six years will pass, and he’ll be driving himself.

Writing a Science Memoir
I’m haven’t only been on mom duty for the last 18+ months. When I chose to leave my job, I had a big goal:  to write a book – a memoir combined with science research and advocacy – about my experience navigating grief and attempting to understand alcoholism after my brother’s death in March of 2023.

I had the idea for the book within the first few months after his death, as I struggled to find resources that resonated with me. my situation, and how I understand the world.  My intuition told me that his death had to make sense somehow and the same thing must have happened to many others.  It wasn’t only about my brother or what I needed – other loved ones who had lost someone to alcohol needed a better resource to help them understand too. 

I knew it would be a big project, so I reached out to my friend Amanda, who saw my brother as her “not-blood” brother, and she agreed to co-author.  Her experience in writing and academic research would be a valuable asset.  However, Amanda was finishing her PhD dissertation, getting married, and starting a new job so she wasn’t able to start her sections of the writing right away.  Fortunately she has successfully completed all of those major life milestones in the time since (Go Amanda!) and is now working hard to write her sections of our book. 

I started working on the book just like I would tackle any other large project:  determining what was in scope and breaking it down into approachable pieces.  When I began writing, it was a mix of revisiting my grief-filled memories and researching alcohol and grief so I could understand what happened to my brother as well as my own reaction.  I ended up with a first draft of 80,000 words and citations for 150+ sources.  Then, I started over at the beginning, rereading, rewriting, and editing.  As of now (June 2025), my sections are done and waiting for Amanda to add hers before we self-edit and send it to an editor.  We plan to send proposals to publishers, then self-publishing if needed.

By the end of my writing and reviewing, I became convinced that we all, as a culture and society, would benefit from drinking less alcohol, making it more acceptable not to drink, and making it easier for people who are drinking more than they want to get help.  We should view alcohol as an occasional treat and an intentional choice, not an expectation for anyone in any situation.  Let’s stop making drinking alcohol the default.  Alcohol is not a problem only for those few with something “different” about them.  It impacts everyone.

Writing the book is the accomplishment I’m proudest of even though it’s not done yet.  Right now, it’s a 200 page Google doc that’s not ready for sharing.  It feels like I’m still in between life seasons, perhaps in that time of the spring in Colorado when it could be snowing one day followed by 80 degrees and sunny the next.  Once it’s published, I’ll have a concrete *thing* to point at, a link on my resume, something concrete to say “Look!  THIS is what I did during that “career break” on my resume.”

Professional Experience
Before I left my job with the international STEM education non-profit FIRST in November of 2023, I served as a program, project, and grant manager, working to ensure that underrepresented and underserved students had the opportunity to participate in FIRST LEGO League.  I loved FIRST LEGO League since I first learned of the program before the 2007/2008 POWER PUZZLE season.  The Girl Scout council where I was working was offered grants to start 10 teams.  I didn’t know anything about robotics, but girls + STEM + LEGO had me jumping in with both feet, on a path that would lead me to careers with 4-H Youth Development and FIRST itself, and continues as a volunteer coach today.  You can find the short, professional version of my FIRST experience on my resume, so here are some highlights of my FIRST experience:

• Meeting the Governor of Nebraska when he spoke at our first (or second?) Nebraska FIRST LEGO League Championship, held at the Strategic Air and Space Museum, with an SR-71 Blackbird (the world’s fastest aircraft) above our heads
• Coaching a team of Girl Scouts from the neighborhood elementary school in Lincoln, NE, who talked with my grandmother on a video call during the SENIOR SOLUTIONS FIRST LEGO League season
• Leading judging for the global FIRST LEGO League program; learning from and collaborating with the long-time volunteer Global Judge Advisor, an actual rocket scientist and a host of amazing, smart, dedicated judges from all over the world at local, Championship, and World Festival events
• Taking my kid to World Festival.  We were in the Judge’s room when he was about 17 months old and found a leftover cornbread muffin from lunch that we had stored on the bottom of the stroller.  He had it all over the floor after all the adults turned our heads for seconds.  Taking him again when he was four and watching him ask insightful questions of FRC students and make comparisons between robots.
• Coaching my kid’s team, through all the trials and tribulations, their disbelief (and mine) when they advanced to the State Championship
• That moment at the end of the FIRST Robotics Competition that doesn’t happen in the same way any more; thousands of people on their feet cheering for kids excited about STEM.  It didn’t matter who won because we knew that everyone there had the same goal, supporting the young scientists and engineers who will create our future.