From the Navy to the Peace Corps and beyond, I've had a wide range of life and career experiences that shape who I am today and how approach my work as a communication professional. At 17, I joined the Navy and traveled from the Panama Canal to Nova Scotia to the Suez Canal and a war zone in the Persian Gulf. At 21, I attended the University of North Dakota thanks to the G.I. Bill and the maturity gained through service. After graduating with honors, my curiosity and camera took me to Nepal, where I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I taught English in the hillside tea fields of Ilam, not far from Darjeeling, India.I returned from Nepal to graduate school for my Masters of Arts in Communication and Conflict Resolution. My thesis centered on the role journalists play when reporting on conflict. I became fascinated with conflict resolution and how I could facilitate it through my own work as a reporter and communicator.Over my career, I've worked in television as a news reporter, a print and digital journalist, a digital marketing strategist, and as an executive director. Today, I channel my creative energies and expertise into running my own creative services company, CallSign51 -- named in part after the guided missile cruiser, the USS Thomas S. Gates CG-51, on which I served. We help people and organizations grow their revenue through photos and video storytelling and advertising.I genuinely love to serve others. I enjoy leading, managing and being part of teams on creative projects. I've always been inclined to work for service organizations and those people and institutions dedicated to community building, social justice, faith in practice, peace studies and conflict management. Helping my clients grow revenue is just another way to further their goals of sharing their value in the world. It's hard to change the world when you've gone out of business.