Some career paths are straight lines, and others take unexpected twists and turns. My path began with a fairly narrow focus on monarch butterfly reproductive biology. It will probably end at the UW-Madison Arboretum, where I lead an organization with a three-pronged mission: public outreach and education, land management, and applied research focused on habitat restoration. I’ll argue that the twists and turns driven by detours for child-rearing and spousal considerations allowed me to engage in activities that would have been very different had I been following a more traditional academic career. These activities led to partnerships with graduate students studying a broad spectrum of education, basic biology, and insect conservation topics; as well as K-12 educators, government agencies, and land managers. Perhaps most importantly, they led to a citizen science project that has almost completed its third decade, and a passion for promoting connections between the public and the natural world, via what is arguably North America’s most popular insect.
