During her undergraduate degree, you could often find Laurel with her arms covered in porcelain clay creating organic sculptures for her B.F.A. at Brigham Young University. Following her art degree, Laurel began a Master’s of Public Administration degree and it was there that she discovered and fell in love with coding. After finishing her M.P.A., Laurel taught two graduate level courses for the Marriott School of Business—Data Science and Data Visualization. While Laurel enjoys many aspects of data science, she particularly enjoys working with unstructured data and exploring the intersection of equity, social justice, and machine learning.

In her free time, Laurel enjoys playing board games, having outdoor adventures, bouldering, reading, and playing music with her husband and their one year old daughter.