Kirstie was born in New Jersey in the Watchung Mountains. Every summer, her family traveled to Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, for a technology-free vacation on an island in the middle of the lake. She spent warm summer days kayaking, riding the speedboat through "the broads," tubing, canoeing and hiking. She remembers sitting with her mother at the end of the docks, listening to the loons sing, and riding out on the pontoon boat to see them swimming in the water. Her mother was also an avid gardener and birder, so she spent much of her childhood running rampant over their acre of wooded land or "helping" plant flowers in the garden beds. If not there, she would ride on the back of her father's motorcycle through the Watchung Mountains.

Kirstie has a bachelor's degree in English from Wingate University in North Carolina. Her tenure there included being a teaching assistant for both the honors program director and a sociology professor. A true nerd, she also worked in the university library; her time there inspired her to go to grad school for her master’s degree in library and information science from Rutgers University in New Jersey. Kirstie has traveled the East Coast, including New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Florida. Internationally, she has been to England, Ireland and Nazaré, Portugal, where her fiancée proposed. She is thrilled to join the Nat Hab team as a Digital Asset Manager, which combines her passions for nature, travel and information management.

An avid reader, Kirstie collects special editions. She loves nothing more than reading outside—there is nothing like hiking to new surroundings and settling in with a good book!