I came to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) as a Presidential Management Fellow 15 years ago. After I converted, I became an Information Research Specialist (now Senior Research Librarian). It is an honor to work so closely with the United States Congress.

In my position at CRS, I have worked in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment answering 150+ questions per year from Congress on my research specialties of Asian affairs, military casualties, and trade.

Seven years ago, I was competitively chosen to receive GIS training and became a part-time GIS analyst along with my research duties. The GIS program has grown by at least 10% each year since then, and I now have developed a specialty in mapping some of the most controversial areas of the world, including territorial disputes in Iraq and Syria, the South China Sea, and the Sahel region. I think of maps as data with a context, and as such, they have proved extremely useful to convey information quickly to our clients.

I have also gained experience as a project lead, and have led projects ranging from a successful effort to create a division intranet, to my current role as chair of the Communications Team tasked with building the websites for three pre-conferences being hosted by the Library of Congress in August, 2016. I and my team built these websites using WordPress.

I have worked successfully on innumerable groups, from informal groups that form to work on individual memos or reports, to formal groups, such as working seamlessly with the two full-time GIS analysts on the GIS team.

I have also been very pleased to be involved in democracy promotion and Parliamentary research throughout my career at CRS. This began with an early opportunity to train Parliamentary researchers through the House Democracy Partnership, and has included a role as a corresponding member on the Library and Research Services for Parliaments Committee of the International Federation of Libraries Association.

I enjoy teasing out threads of knowledge from a tangle of data and allowing the Members, Committees, and Staff with whom I work choose their own path forward with increased clarity. I look forward continuing to expand on those skills for a growing list of clients.

For fun, I enjoy writing and wildlife photography; for a sample of both, you can take a look at the “dispatch” on my trip to South Africa and Botswana published by the blog DC Focused.