I was a 4 year varsity swimmer in both high school (Berkeley High, Berkeley, CA) and in college (Colby College, Waterville, ME). I took some time off swimming after college when I joined the Peace Corps and served for three years as a volunteer in the mountains of the Dominican Republic. Upon arrival back into the US, I decided to start swimming again and joined the local Masters swim team. Since then, I have gone to nursing school and graduate school, and competed in open water swims all over the country, including the Chesapeake Bay Swim in Maryland, a solo Maui Channel swim (10 miles from Lanai to Maui) in 2005, and a solo Lake Tahoe crossing (12 miles) in 2006. I joined the South End Rowing Club in San Francisco in 2004 and am active with the club's bay swimming program. I took this past year off from competition to aid with the training of a close friend who swam the English Channel in the summer of 2007 and served as a crew member and a pacer for that swim. I have worked as a registered nurse on an acute and palliative care unit and now work as a nurse in the public health sector of San Francisco.