What area do you work in within the VPFA portfolio?
Campus Planning and Facilities Management (CPFM) in the Design and Construction team.
What is your current position, and what are your job responsibilities?
I am an Owner’s Representative.
What has been your career path; how did you end up in your current position?
It has been an interesting journey. I’m from Fargo, North Dakota. After high school, I lived in Montana for six or seven years. I became really good at being waitstaff (you learn a lot from that job—patience, humility, the ability to multitask). I went back home for a bit and trained as a massage therapist, was a dance instructor, and got even better at my waitstaff skills.
I decided to go to school again, so enrolled in North Dakota State University as an English Major. After a year, I transferred to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minneapolis, where I graduated with a studio art degree. After that I moved out to Oregon and got a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon.
Unfortunately, I graduated in 2010 when the unemployment rate for architects in Portland was 25%. I did some fundraising for Bring Recycling in Eugene for a couple of years and then spent 12 years working at Dustrud Architecture, doing a lot of private projects and multi-family work.
When the pandemic happened, I did what a lot of people did and spent some time really thinking about what I was doing in life. I applied to the UO and got a job with Campus Planning. I was working on the Heritage Project for Campus Planning when an Owner’s Representative job came open in Design and Construction. I asked around about the position and decided to apply—and here we are!
What do you like about your current position?
I love the people I work with! It’s so interesting!
I get to meet lots of interesting people on campus: all our campus partners and contractors and end users. I get to work with the Design and Construction crew, the bigger CPFM crew, teams in Information Services, people in Environmental Health and Safety, contractors, and lots of different kinds of end users. I love everyone I work with.
The jobs are so interesting! I love all the old buildings and I love building stuff, so this is perfect for me. I am very happy here.
Please share some insight into what your job involves.
I will share the way I explain construction projects to people.
No matter the project, it will cost more than you think and take longer than you think. Sometimes in the process, people get mad at me—it is going to happen. That is just part of the process.
Also, something unexpected will probably happen. We don’t know exactly what that thing is going to be because we are prepared for all the unexpected things that have happened before, but there is always something new that can happen to keep us on our toes. We will be prepared for lots of things, and we will probably be prepared for most of the things; but we will not be prepared for all of them. There is always a new surprise in construction.
That is my approach to projects.
Also, I love being able to walk around on campus. It is a pretty cool space. Also, this is one of the only places in town that has buildings with so much age and history.
A little about myself:
- Family
- I live with my Jeff – there are so many Jeffs that I work with, so I had to get possessive about the one I spend all my free time with. He has two daughters – one is a nurse working at Salem Hospital and the other will be graduating from UO this June in Product Design.
- I have a younger brother that lives in Texas (so hot!) with his wife and two kids. His oldest son just graduated from high school, and his daughter is a junior and captain of the JV Cheerleading team. They came to visit Oregon two summers ago and were surprised by how green it is!
- Jeff and I have two cats: one is an indoor-outdoor tabby named Bismarck.
- The other is an outdoor only orange cat named Big Papa Peaches. You can only pet him from the neck up. Trust me on this. You will want to stroke him. He looks so cuddly. You will have a hard time resisting. Trust me. Resist.
- Food
- I like all kinds of food. Really. I like cooking. I use recipes as a guideline more than a gospel (which irritates my Jeff). He doesn’t understand why I can’t make things the same way twice, even though I explain that we don’t have all the ingredients listed in the recipe, but we do have what’s in the fridge, and I made it work.
- I would like to be better at decorating cakes. If you look at my phone, you will see absurd numbers of cake pics.
- If you could only take three items with you to a deserted island, what would they be?
- A library
- Beach umbrella
- Cocktail bar (fully stocked, of course)
May 2026