My fascination with the ocean’s complexity began along the Jersey Shore, where my childhood curiosity and wonder roamed freely, and where my father’s warnings as a fisherman about the creeping normalcy of changing oceans became an integral part of my upbringing. Along these same coastlines, I also experienced the devastating impacts of a climate-fueled disaster through Hurricane Sandy, grasping the link between climate change and the vulnerability of coastal communities. These personal and academic reckonings shape the questions I ask, questions that refuse to separate environmental change from the social systems that produce them, and from the communities forced to live with the consequences. Across field and laboratory research, community-engaged work, and science-policy training, I have come to understand that ecological and social processes are inseparable, and I pursue research that seeks to be disruptive and expose these connections rather than merely contributing within existing boundaries. Beyond the lab, I co-founded Climate Futures Studio, a collective for QTBIPOC artists and scientists create storytelling projects that insist on imagining and designing, more just and optimistic climate futures; I also serve on the Board of Directors for Queer Sol (NGO) to support work connecting historically excluded communities to nature. On my free time, I enjoy exploring nature and engaging in creative activities, hiking coastal trails and national parks, as well as painting and photographing the worlds I move through; I also enjoy spending time coding, which lets me turn my curiosity into something tangible, as well as reading books on philosophy, critical theory, and history in order to better understand the world around me and my place in it.