After receiving her BS in biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1988, she earned her Ph.D. in behavioral ecology from Binghamton University in 1995. She came to the ONPRC in 1996 as a postdoctoral fellow. She conducted behavioral endocrinology research at ONPRC and in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, and in 2001 returned to the Primate Center full time to oversee the Behavioral Services Unit in the Division of Comparative Medicine (DCM).