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Hi, I'm Grant.

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Specify Collections Consortium

Kansas, United States

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About

I love working with people and technology.

I enjoy learning new things and building meaningful connections while contributing to scientific initiatives and research. I am an avid traveler who loves visiting new places and immersing myself in different cultures. In my free time, I enjoy learning new skills, going for long walks, reading, writing, and spending time with family and friends.

Blog Posts

Projects

Experience

Specify Collections Consortium

Product and Technical Support Manager

Specify Collections Consortium, University of Kansas

May 2023 - Present

  • Strategic Leadership: Serve as the functional product lead and subject matter expert for the Specify Collections Consortium (SCC), a global software initiative for biological and earth science research collections. Translate complex user feedback into technical software requirements and define the strategic roadmap for platform development.
  • Operational Management: Oversee internal operations for the support and documentation units. Establish and monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics to evaluate operational effectiveness and service quality.
  • Supervision: Recruit, train, and supervise student support staff. Direct the daily workflows of support personnel to ensure responsive technical assistance for over 450 member collections across 22 countries in 6 continents.
  • International Partnerships: Cultivate strategic relationships with international collaborators, including the Swiss Academy of Sciences and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), to orchestrate joint ventures and software integrations.
  • Software Engineering: Contribute directly to the codebase with over 1,700 commits to SCC repositories since 2024. Lead Quality Assurance (QA) and User Experience (UX) testing to ensure software reliability and usability.
  • Infrastructure Administration: Architect and maintain cloud infrastructure on AWS (EC2, RDS, S3), ensuring high availability for mission-critical member portals and data hosting services.
Specify Collections Consortium

Data Integration Specialist

Specify Collections Consortium, University of Kansas

November 2022 - May 2023

  • Data Migration Engineering: Coordinated large-scale data migration projects for major natural history museums, mapping legacy database structures to modern research data semantics.
  • Interoperability Standards: Designed and implemented automated export pipelines to global biodiversity aggregators (GBIF, iDigBio), ensuring compliance with Darwin Core standards.
  • Technical Communication: Developed comprehensive technical documentation and product requirements to support user adoption and data accessibility, cementing the Specify Community Forum as the #1 source of information and community for the SCC.
Specify Collections Consortium

Student Software Specialist

Specify Collections Consortium, University of Kansas

October 2021 - November 2022

  • Quality Assurance: Developed workflows for effectively evaluating Specify software during the early stages of development and codified methodologies for staged regression testing at scale.
  • Technical Analysis: Performed complex data cleaning and transformation using SQL and Python to resolve legacy data issues for member institutions.
  • User Interface Design: Collaborated with the engineering team to mock up User Interface (UI) designs and execute regression testing for the Specify 7 platform.
  • Community Support: Provided frontline technical solutions to the research community, fostering trust and ensuring member retention through high-quality service. Created the Specify Community Forum to put a public face on the SCC.
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Assistant Bakery Manager

Cosentino's Food Stores

March 2020 - Oct 2021

  • Team Building & Training: Managed a team, handling scheduling, directing, training, and fostering a positive atmosphere. Facilitated training and onboarding for all new employees, covering baking, cake decorating, closing, and opening procedures.

Education

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University of Kansas School of Business

BS, Business Administration, Information Systems

Aug 2019 - May 2023

  • 3.95/4.0 GPA, honor roll
  • Studied abroad in Paderno del Grappa, Italy (CIMBA)

Conference Presentations

Oral Presentations

  • "Advancing Biological Collections Computing with Specify 7: A Year of Transformational Updates" - SPNHC, San Francisco, CA (May 2023)
  • "Data cleaning for maximum impact: Tools and workflows for data providers" - Digital Data Conference, Lawrence, KS (May 2024)
  • "GeoSpecify, a Collection Management Platform for Geological Objects" - European Mineralogical Conference, Dublin, Ireland (August 2024)
  • "Digitization Planning for Large Collections with Specify 7" - SPNHC-TDWG Joint Conference, Okinawa, Japan (September 2024)
  • "Extending Specify 7 for Geoscience Collections" - SPNHC, Okinawa, Japan (September 2024)
  • "Publishing Your Data with Specify 7" - SPNHC, Lawrence, KS (May 2025)
  • "Specify Spotlight: Improving Data Digitization and Management" - SPNHC, Lawrence, KS (May 2025)

Workshops Led

  • SwissCollNet Natural History Museums - Switzerland (June 2023)
  • Pacific Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service - Victoria, BC, Canada (February 2024)
  • Western Australia Herbarium, DBCA - Perth, Australia (September 2024)
  • University of Kansas, SPNHC - Lawrence, KS (May 2025)
  • CSIC-MNCN, CETAF-DEST course - Madrid, Spain (December 2025)

Invited Panels & Symposia

  • "Digital Data Standards in Biodiversity" - BioDigiCon (2023)
  • "Introduction to Digitization of Biodiversity Specimens" - iDigBio Digitization Academy (2023, 2024, 2025)
  • "Linking People and Specimens" - Bionomia Workshop (2024)
  • Community Data Standards Groups - GBIF and TDWG meetings

Skills

Languages

Technologies