It all(?) started at age 18, wearing a rented tuxedo at the Explorers Club in NYC. I tried to explain my high school research on pine marten to my dinner companions while perched nervously on the dais. I haven’t worn a penguin suit since, but every year has been just as fascinating as I’ve worked my way down the “food chain” from predators to prey to plants to soils, and up from science to management to policy, all thanks to an incredible series of careers, and amazingly just one job, as a research scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service.