About Me

Hi, I'm Cecilia.

I am 25 years old, I enjoy long walks in the woods, and I fell in love with the world at a very young age.

When I was young, my parents were awoken each morning with their seventh child jumping on the bed exclaiming "It's a boo-tiful day!", even if it was pouring rain. Which is true. I think every day is beautiful, whether it be the way sunshine warms your body, or the way that rain glitters when it pours, or the way snow draws silence.

From a young age, I have always loved the outdoors and have vivid memories of being told to "please shut up about the trees". Behind my fence growing up was the trail for a state park, and I wish I had realized at the time how lucky I was to have such easy access to a rich green space

I've always loved creative expression, and had dreamed of being a popstar when I was younger. I doodled everywhere, and upcycling came naturally to me before I even knew what it was.

At the start of each school year, we got new jeans, and at the end of each school year, we chopped them into our summer shorts. Seeing all this extra fabric, I used it to make denim purses and headbands and whatever else I could craft together with glue and beads and whatever else I had laying around. My mom even sat me down and asked middle school me if it was something that I wanted to pursue to sell and such, and at the time I said no.

But that moment always sticks with me, because I always think back and know that my family has always encouraged and supported me, and without that love shown to me, I would not be the person I am today. I can't imagine how much potential has been lost to a lack of love and support.

When I was a teenager, I admit that I lost the love that I had for the world for a while, as so many have because growing up is stressful and you can't help that. But I had hope for myself, I took my leaving for college as an opportunity to improve myself and explore who I was. Going into University, I had a strong plan to pursue a Business Marketing degree, going to a specific college program, graduating and working as a hot shot business lady breaking glass ceilings (ambition gifted generationally in my family).

Thankfully, I chose to go to school in a biodiversity hotspot, and made friends with other nature nerds who showed me some of the cool things we lived near. The space around Wilmington, North Carolina happens to be the only place in the world that you can find Venus flytraps growing naturally in the wild, and in the summer you can find bioluminescence in the water if you know where to look, and it gave me a great space to reconnect with the environment.

The summer after my freshman year, I had a (brief) position with the business center at my school where I had the opportunity to interview Dr. John Hayes about ShellBond (see environmental research page), and promptly afterwards forgot about my notes as they got buried in the depths of my computer.

After finding myself with an excess of paints my sophomore year, I started painting empty bottles and random cooler, and pieces of cardboard because I didn't want to spend money on getting nice papers when I was just having fun. That Christmas, my little drew my name for our family Secret Santa and got me a nice set of paints, a paint pallet, and canvases of varying sizes and I got to make things that felt a lot more official.

One day, when I went to a coffee shop with the intent to study, I ended up getting sidetracked and looked into ways to share my art all day instead. That night I was hanging out with my friend, Gabe, and we got on the topic of oysters because of what he was learning in marine biology. I remembered my notes, pulled them out, and when rereading through the uses, I came up with the idea to make semi-tidal artwork using ShellBond as a way to create an educational and restorative public art piece. I immediately got so excited that I emailed Dr. Hayes at 9pm asking for a meeting, and at about midnight made a video diary talking about how I think that I just had an idea that would change my life, and I can confidently say that I was right.

I quickly fell into planning and design mode, and wanted to make sure that all of my artwork represented a sustainable message, and came up with the recycled plastic artwork, inspired by the bioluminescence me and my friends visited so often. I was hosting art shows in whatever places would let me and stayed up all night filling pages with notes and designs.

I got completely swallowed by wanting to get everything done as quickly as my mind went, and quickly burnt myself out severely. I had put myself at risk mentally and physically, which was hard for me to process and work through, but afterwards I took stock and decided that if I was going to pursue this path, I didn't want anybody to look at my work as a business idea, but rather as a scientist's research. Halfway through my junior year I switched my major to environmental science, and despite my course-load being heavier and harder, my grades actually improved because I actually cared about what I was learning and actively wanted to learn more.

When coronavirus hit, I made the difficult decision to pause for a while. In the span of a week, seven of my art shows were canceled with no reschedule in sight, and most importantly, it did not feel right for me to ask for others to spend money on art when there were more important things to worry about.

So I took advantage of that time to focus on my degree, interned teaching youth environmental science, and graduated in December 2021 from UNCW. I spent the next few months in Virginia Beach working for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, helping to organize their 2022 Clean the Bay Day event, and as their Chesapeake Oyster Alliance intern. With that position, I attended the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC and had the opportunity to speak on an environmental science panel, a youth in conservation panel, and lead an educational oyster cooking demonstration with Lawrence Friedl, director of NASA's Applied Sciences Program.

From there, I worked as the Head of STEM Education from Young Scientist Academy working with immigrant, refugee, and underserved youth and providing STEM opportunities.

After deciding to find new shores, I moved to Washington in January 2024 to work with dolphins and sea lions, and I am now the Land and Facilities Manager for SHADOW Lake Nature Preserve, serving as the 133.5 acre property's restoration ecologist and primary researcher.

From oysters to dolphins to cougars and bears, I am constantly in awe of the wildlife that I have the honor of working for and with on a daily basis.

Love, Cecilia