
Angela has specialized knowledge of wildlife biology, ecology, and the natural sciences, including natural resource management, conservation and policy. She also specializes in travel writing, blogging, and health writing (particularly chronic illness and patient advocacy, with first hand knowledge of Bell's palsy, Lyme disease, sleep apnea, and ADHD).
Angela is a competent technical writer whose professional experience includes articles, reports, press releases, legal announcements, monitoring reports, analysis reports, scoping documents, public outreach, decision documents, grant reporting, and grant proposals & applications.
She is also able to write in engaging conversational tones, with highly adaptable styles for projects such as blogging, travel writing, and providing content for social media sites and campaigns.
She can tailor her style to diverse audiences or user groups and has been a contributor to multiple non-profit social media sites and newsletters.
Angela loves reading, writing, hiking, backpacking, caving, fishing, photography, canoeing, wildlife watching & hands on field work, bat watching, girl scouting with her troop, enjoying the outdoors with her two wonderful kids and amazing professional firefighter/paramedic husband, and taking advantage of her family's unique opportunities to travel standby through her husband's summer airline job.
She is a working mom currently recovering from Lyme disease. Her experiences with Lyme disease, Bell's palsy, and parenting children with ADHD have increased her personal appreciation of targeted social media networking and introduced her to the world of on-line health advocacy.
Angela completed her first degree at this University, which provides unique interdisciplinary course structures for more integrated skill set development compared to other undergraduate programs.
Angela was a Boone & Crockett fellow under acclaimed author, researcher, and former Chief of the US Forest Service, Jack Ward Thomas. She was a teaching assistant while completing coursework and was selected as a US Forest Service Graduate Student Wildlife Biologist Trainee for the Norther Region, and as a US Fish & Wildlife Refuge Centennial Scholar.
Coursework in Wildlife Biology & Management, Ecology & Wildlife Field Techniques, Emergency Medical Technician certification, Wildland Fire Management coursework & certifications.
Angela has worked for state and federal government as a Wildlife Biologist, Writer Editor, Wildland Firefighter, and Wildlife Technician. She is familiar with natural resource policy, environmental analysis methods, wildlife analysis methods, Endangered Species Act assessments and documentation, National Environmental Protection Act analysis and documentation, and cooperative relationships between government agencies and non-government organizations.
She has written, analyzed for, and compiled analysis documents, decision documents, press releases, legal notices, public correspondence, and reports and articles for agency partners.
Angela has worked as a Wildlife Biologist for a federal agency and earned her Masters Degree in Wildlife Biology. She is familiar with a wide array of natural sciences and with natural resource policy, environmental analysis methods, Wildlife analysis methods, Endangered Species Act assessments and documentation, National Environmental Protection Act analysis and documentation, and cooperative relationships between government agencies and non-government organizations.
She has analyzed environmental impacts to wildlife species for numerous government projects and has managed wildlife monitoring work on over a million acres of public land.
During her graduate studies she was a Boone and Crockett Fellow, was selected as one of eight graduate level National Fish and Wildlife Refuge Centennial Scholars, and was a teaching assistant in courses covering multiple science disciplines.
Angela has assisted non-profit groups through volunteer work, grant writing, social media content writing, blogging, and by founding fundraising and media campaigns. She has volunteered with Girl Scouts as a co-leader, troop leader, and parent volunteer. She has also collaborated with non-profit conservation groups extensively as an agency Biologist and as a Writer Editor. She has experience as a volunteer for multiple non-profits in addition to her paid work with non-profit organization and governement agency partnerships.
Angela has been active outdoors since childhood and has built her adult life around outdoor hobbies and jobs. She is an experienced field biologist, proficient in front and back-country field techniques, navigating challenging terrain, survival skills, first aid, search and rescue techniques, and bear safety. She oversees and administers back country bear safety and bear spray trainings for government employees, volunteers and partner organizations.
She lives in the northern Rocky Mountains near Glacier National Park and thoroughly enjoys all manner of outdoor recreation with her children and Girl Scouts. She enjoys backpacking, caving, rafting, canoeing, cross country skiing, wildlife and outdoor photography, bat watching, fishing, hiking, camping, and constantly accumulating gear for these endeavors and her job as a biologist.
She recently joined her local Grotto and has worked with Search and Rescue as an EMT on multiple rescue teams. She was a Wildland Firefighter on an elite Interagency Hot Shot crew and has maintained her credentials for many years through her federal employment as a biologist.
She enjoyed mountain biking tremendously in her younger years, building and maintaining her bike from spare parts in high school and working in a trendy bike shop during college in Fairbanks, Alaska, where her bike was her exclusive form of transportation to work and school year round. She adapted her bike, attire, and gear for comfortable riding down to about minus 40 degrees fahrenheit, but also riding in colder conditions as needed.
Her gear selection criteria can be adapted to just about any setting, including field going personnel, casual or more avid recreation endeavors, family based activities, back-country or front-country activities, strategic water proofing needs, or Girl or Boy Scout troop activities.
Angela has also analyzed the impacts of recreational uses of public land on other human and natural resources, and has worked with multiple outdoor recreation organizations and groups in her professional work experience.
Angela enjoys writing about practical green living ideas and strategies, and has worked with school groups and Scout troops on educational projects and presentations in these areas. Her specialized experience and professional work in this area reaches beyond indoor strategies for conserving resources and heavily emphasizes preservation of wildlife and habitat.
She has worked professionally with preserving wildlife particularly where the needs of people and animals compete, but also with educating the public about mitigating risks to grizzly bears and other large wildlife through food rewards.
Good stewardship in one's yard, campsite, and community includes considering the needs of large mammals in more rural areas, but also includes wildlife and birds of all sizes in urban settings as well. She urges individuals and home owners to be aware of the simple things they can do to these ends, and to be especially aware of things they can do to reduce risks to bats from swimming pools, chemicals, and pets, as bats are currently in particular need of help.
She loves to educate individuals and communities about the benefits of species that are traditionally not favored in close proximity and provide realistic, practical, and safe strategies for sharing habitats and mitigating risks. Many of the risks to wildlife globally can be addressed through consumer choices, in addition to individual practices at home.
Angela thoroughly loves to travel and particularly enjoys blogging about her family's current adventures in standby travel. Her reasons for travel vary widely, ranging from wildlife work to casual family vacations to spur of the moment trips across the country to watch bats emerge from caves. Her firefighter/paramedic husband works for an airline during summers, affording them the opportunity to fly standby for free to virtually anywhere.
Angela and her family have taken creative advantage of this with their travels and have become extremely experienced at packing light (including many carry-on only family trips) and at assessing luggage and travel gear.
Through her recent years with chronic illness, Angela has learned to adapt travel according to health limitations, the ages and related limitations of traveling with children, and limitations to time and money.
Angela also enjoys car trips and car camping with her family and has recently bought an old camper to renovate.
As a Mom and Girl Scout leader, Angela's non-work life has been kid focused for the past fifteen years, with opportunities for kid focused endeavors in her professional life as well. As a Biologist she has had the pleasure of working with numerous school groups over the years through educational presentations and hands-on, outdoor activities.
As the mother of two children with ADHD who also qualify for gifted student programs, she has had the fortune of seeing what a cooperative group of parents, teachers, administrators, and support personnel can do to accommodate the needs of students as individuals. Angela's family spends a great deal of time outdoors and traveling, so her writing in other industries can easily be adapted to a family focus in those areas.
As a biologist and pet owner, Angela has a great deal to say about animals. She has the perfect family dog (a rescue) and keeps ducks and chickens. Her duck keeping has recently bridged into fostering duckling orphans for a local wildlife rehabilitation organization, which has been a dream come true for her two kids.
Complex issues arise surrounding pets, with wildlife-related issues being only a small subset. However, the sale of species that can invade local habitats is a larger issue for wildlife in many areas. Alternately, responsibly kept exotic animals can overlap this issue or can be a very different topic all together.
Angela can bring authoritative or engaging, biological or personal perspectives to these and related complex topics. Simpler topics such as basic pet care are right up her alley as well, after a childhood's worth of small pets.
Angela has worked in physically demanding, historically all male professions for over eighteen years and has supervised men and women in these fields. As a mother and Girl Scout leader, she has tried to instill physical outdoor competencies in girls through methods that do not in anyway undermine their femininity or imply to them that their competency is based on comparisons to men. Angela was honored to receive a Women for Social Action Scholarship during graduate school that had been planed, funded, and administered by undergraduate student for a graduate student mom.
She has worked and recreated in numerous physically arduous and extreme settings, including working on an elite Interagency Hot Shot Wildland Fire Crew, Search and Rescue, and Emergency Services and has had opportunities to formally and informally advocate for women in related settings.
Angela's career with her federal agency began as an elite Wildland Firefighter when female crew members were less than 20% of most crews. Through her years of agency employ in competitive fields, she is familiar with many aspects of employee management in federal government, including review of subordinates, training plans, disability discrimination protections, reasonable accommodations, and the impacts of human resource centralization on employee and agency efficiency.
Angela has first hand experience with on-line health advocacy issues and patient networking through her struggles with Lyme disease over the past four years. She was misdiagnosed for the first three years of her illness but has experienced tremendous recovery in the past year since her diagnosis. She also experienced Bell's palsy, a temporary partial facial paralysis during her early months of Lyme disease. She has also been diagnosed with sleep apnea and orthostatic hypotension and was initial diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome prior to her Lyme disease diagnosis.
She was also diagnosed with ADD after her daughter was diagnosed as a second grader. She is now a parent of and advocate two children with ADD. Both children, as with many ADD/ADHD children and adults, are considered gifted but struggle with the challenges these overlapping situations can bring to a public school education. Her family has seen the positive outcomes when educators, physicians, counselors, and parents come together through appropriate processes to accommodate alternative educational needs.
Her daughter underwent multiple tumor resections as a toddler, leading to the removal of her spleen, 1/3 of her stomach, and 1/10 of her pancreas. At the time, myofiboroblastic inflammatory pseudotumors were extremely rare, and needed highly specialized attention through the Seattle Children's Hospital and University of Washington. Protocols for preventive treatments for pediatric asplenia have evolved steadily, requiring continued (although happily more occasionally needed) diligence and advocacy with the care of her now teenage daughter.
Angela has drafted numerous press releases in her role as a federal agency Writer Editor, primarily for scoping and comment periods for proposed federal land management activities. She has also contributed information or drafted press releases for public events, such as Bear Fairs, Frog Days, and other educational events. All releases in that setting are finalized by Line Officers or Public Affairs Officer.
For other organizations, Angela has written or contributed to releases for events and coordinated with press in regards to fundraising campaigns.
Angela has contributed to newsletters for non-profit conservation organizations, primarily as a federal Biologist and member of collaborative working groups, but also in her free time as a volunteer or organization member.
Angela began blogging primarily about her health experiences in 2011 and has founded multiple blogs for herself and for organizations since then.
She enjoys blogging about travel experiences, health, kids, their ducks and chickens, and about wildlife and conservation issues.
Angela can adapt her blogging style and structure to any format, tone, or topic in as engaging or authoritative or humorous a style as desired.
Angela has started Facebook pages for herself and for non profit organizations and currently provides content for multiple pages. Her own pages pertain to wildlife and to health advocacy--primarily Lyme disease awareness. The content she provides to other groups has proven engaging amongst their audiences, with a recent post showing 95% more engagement than any previous post there.