Growing up on a fifth generation family farm in Eastern Iowa has had a profound impact on the person and designer I am today. This upbringing in the rural Iowa landscape has given me a strong connection with land on which we live, work and play. These connections to place are crucial to the conservation and stewardship of the land. For me conservation and stewardship runs deep, values handed down from prior generations to be carried into the future. Destined to work the land in another way, through landscape architecture I seek to create strong connections to place for people and communities, facilitating the conservation and stewardship of the land far into the future. This approach to design is what drives me each and everyday, the crucial role of landscape architecture in this excites me.