I've always enjoyed being outdoors and fell in love with the concept of biodiversity as an undergrad at UC Berkeley. I took many of the available biodiversity survey courses, including Natural History of Vertebrates with Ned Johnson, Jim Patton and Harry Smith. Went on to do a PhD in marine evolution and phylogeography at Boston University, but somehow lost my connection to the natural history part of biodiversity studies. Since then, I co-founded the Diversity of the Indo-Pacific Network (http://diversityindopacific.net) where we look at diversity patterns in the world's largest biogeographic region at the level of the gene as well as the species, while also trying to increase the number of biodiversity scientists who come from developing Indo-Pacific countries. I try to I am now trying to beef up my natural history skills :-)