I grew up in the Philippines surrounded by turquoise marine waters and fascinating biodiversity. These inspired me to become a marine scientist. I earned my master's degree from the Marine Science Institute University of the Philippines Diliman in 2017. My interest in application of molecular techniques to answer questions in ecology and evolution started when I first became a field assistant under the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History (SI-NMNH). We collected commercial fish species around the country and identify them using DNA barcoding technique. After which, I joined the National Fisheries Research Development Institute (NFRDI) in the Philippines to continue my work focusing on CITES listed invertebrates in the country. I was then able to publish my first paper about the updates on giant clams in the Philippines using mtDNA Co1 and 16s rRNA genes. In 2012, I joined the Marine Molecular Ecology & Evolution Laboratory at UP MSI after receiving a scholarship from USAID NSF-PEER project. This funded my master's thesis which aims to solve cryptic speciation and delineate connectivity patterns among high-value sea cucumber species across the archipelago. I am currently a Phd student working on the genome and transcriptome of Calanus in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.