I was born in the mid 1950s in Worcester, Massachusetts, an interesting area for a variety of weather, and I knew at a young age that I wanted to become a meteorologist.  After considering a number of different colleges I enrolled in the University of Wisconsin in 1972 (B.S. with Honors in 1976), then did graduate studies at Penn State beginning in the fall of 1976 (M.S. in 1979).  I was fortunate to meet my eventual spouse while at Wisconsin and we were married in 1978.  My strongest interest was in operational meteorology, specifically forecasting, and I ended up in a private industry forecasting position after encountering a government hiring freeze at my time of graduation.

Unfortunately, the company I began with encountered financial difficulties by late 1979, and in early 1980 I came to Boulder on a 1 to 2 year appointment as a support scientist at NCAR working on a project to further analyze data from the GATE project.  At that time NCAR was located across the street from the NOAA building where the beginnings of what is now GSL were born (then known as "PROFS"), and I began to interact with that group, eventually getting various levels of funding to participate in early forecast system experiments in the 1980s, while also taking part in a number of scientific field projects at NCAR.  Eventually I became a full-time NOAA employee through CIRA in 1996, where I have remained.

Over the years I have worked with various groups at GSL, generally in areas of forecaster training and model forecast assessment.  I have maintained a strong interest in operational meteorology, and in 1986 began a fairly unique arrangement with the local National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Office (WFO) where I worked operational forecast shifts on a regular basis.  This allowed me to gain a much better understanding of operational forecast needs and practical issues that has helped with my training efforts and other areas of my work at NOAA.  Additionally, over the last few years I have been involved with the CIRA satellite group at Fort Collins in areas of GOES-R Proving Ground product demonstration to NWS forecasters as well as training efforts.