Staff Veterinarian, Licensed Wildlife Rehabber

Although I have been captivated by wildlife since childhood, my first formal experience with wildlife rehabilitation started during my undergraduate studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. This experience cemented my love for wildlife and introduced me to a passion for working with birds of prey. After undergrad, I attended vet school at Oklahoma State University and was heavily involved in the exotics program there. After vet school I found myself back in the Midwest for a small animal rotating internship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by returning to the East Coast for an exotics specialty internship at Tufts University in Massachusetts. I returned once again to Indiana to complete my residency in avian medicine at the Avian and Exotic Animal Clinic, where I also continued to work with injured, orphaned, and ill native Indiana wildlife. As the demand for care for wildlife increased, I have been very fortunate to be able to work with AEAC and Hancock Wildlife Rehab to help found ReWilding Indiana. This will be the first rehab center in the state of Indiana that has a staff veterinarian, and I feel very privileged to be able to serve that crucial role and continue my patient for helping wildlife of all kinds.

Medical Director

My path to exotic pet medicine was a bit unusual-I always pictured being in Critical Care. In high school I was coming home late from my job at an emergency veterinary hospital and came across a dead mother opossum in the road-and her 8 live youngsters. I picked them up and called a wildlife rehabilitator-who insisted that I become her assistant and learn to raise them myself! Over the next few years my father built enclosures for birds of prey, squirrels and all kinds of injured and orphaned wildlife as I learned from her and earned my own rehabilitation license. In vet school I was taught by a woman running what we think was the very first all avian clinic-after one year in canine/feline practice I went to work for her. It's been an amazing road from a 3-person clinic in an 800 square foot store front the business it is now. After more than 25 years I can't believe I get to come to work and do THIS job!