My passion for agriculture stems from my family’s viticulture business, from a background in development economics, and from a long-standing interest in understanding food-culture connections. My training in geography turned my attention toward remote sensing and geospatial methodologies, and showed the importance of spatial thinking in global problem-solving.

My research focuses on agriculture and the monitoring and mapping of agricultural characteristics and processes worldwide. I have spent most of my career leading efforts to define Earth observations data requirements for global agricultural monitoring, and working with space agencies through CEOS in order to increase acquisition of, availability and continuity of, and access to consistently pre-processed satellite data sets for agriculture. In this vein, I am the agriculture point of contact for the CEOS and lead of GEOGLAM's Earth observation data coordination activity.

I am the Director of NASA Acres, the Deputy Director for NASA Harvest. Affiliated with both NASA programs, I also direct the Harvest Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture (SARA) Initiative.

The geosciences has a long history of racism, exclusion, and harm to Black, Indigenous, disabled, and other marginalized communities. Relatedly, our discipline is sorely lacking participation from these minoritized and marginalized communities. I am committed to using my position as a member of the research faculty to increase diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in our department and our discipline more broadly. In this vein, I serve on the BSOS Anti-Black Racism Initiative, on our Department's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Committee, and was a part of our graduate-student led Unlearning Racism in the Geosciences (URGE) Pod.

Unfortunately, I am not able to be the primary advisor for graduate students, but I welcome interested students to contact me if I might help them enter our field. 

I live and work from Colorado, on Oglala Sioux, Arapaho, and Ute land. I have two young children; it's all for them.