I loved my childhood at the feet of the Rocky Mountains in Thatcher, Idaho and my adolescence surrounded by the Superstition Mountains in Mesa, Arizona. I graduated from Brigham Young University with a BS in Zoology (Pre-Medicine) and a minor in Spanish. I completed an MA and a PhD in History from the University of Arkansas.

I currently teach in Religious Education at Brigham Young University. I have also taught in the History Department at the University of Arkansas. I also recently served with the admissions committee for the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine.

My research focuses on genealogy, religion, gender, and medicine in the nineteenth century. My book manuscript examines the lives of the first women baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Europe and Oceania: Ann Dawson (1785-1849) in England and a woman known simply as Teri’i (ca. 1800-ca. 1860) in what is now known as French Polynesia.

My husband, Greg, and I have five children and reside in Utah. Outside of teaching, researching, and writing, I enjoy water-skiing, golf, long walks, playing my violin, and discovering more good eats here in the Rocky Mountains.