Shannon joined Xerces in September of 2025. She grew up on the (once) rural edge of Colorado Springs, CO and in the gardens and greenhouses of her family’s garden center/nursery business, and still resides there. Shannon holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies with a minor in evolutionary biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her interest in benthic macroinvertebrates was piqued during a field ecology course, and she completed a thesis project assessing the effects of wildfire on invertebrate populations in mountain streams. After college, Shannon spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in a rural village in Malawi, Africa. She became a licensed fourth grade teacher upon returning to the U.S., then moved into nonprofit administration and fundraising after the pandemic. Shannon and her husband are aspiring homesteaders and love spending time in the deserts and mountains of the western U.S.