She was born on the coast of a great lake in Michigan, spent her childhood on a little farm in Central Illinois, lived next to a rice field in Japan, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the hills of Los Angeles. She currently resides on the other side of that great lake she was born on, in Milwaukee, where she and her husband are raising their two young children. She started her education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied photography and graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio.