I am an interdisciplinary humanities scholar, trained in art history and archaeology. I received my Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Maryland and my M.A. in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. I teach the art history of pre-Hispanic and Colonial Latin America at a R1 Hispanic Serving Institution. I have published books and articles on the art and architecture of the Moche of Peru and manuscript maps of eighteenth-century coastal Colombia. Before I became an academic, I had brief stints in radio broadcasting, travel writing, and incentive travel planning. After college, I traveled around Europe and the Middle East with a backpack and, with just $200 remaining, settled in Barcelona. Spain where I lived for the next four years. While working for the Fundacio Catalana per a la Recerca organizing a scientific conference on the origin of life in the universe, I had the great fortune of meeting exobiologists (astrobiologists) and astronomers from NASA and the SETI Institute, where I worked until I left to undertake graduate work in art history.