Susie spent her early career years working as a firefighter, park ranger, geologist, and botanist in the great National Parks of the West including Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, and five seasons in Alaska. She has a bachelor’s degree in Geology from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, and a master’s in Quaternary Studies from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. She managed research at the pollen lab at Northern Arizona University for 23 years, where she specialized in Archaeopalynology. Susie has contributed pollen perspectives to research on prehistoric sites in New Mexico, southwest Colorado, and Arizona, and paleoecological and fire history research from sites in California to New Mexico and Colorado. Her current interest is prehistoric agriculture in the arid Southwest and the potential for these ancient, low-tech systems to help modern farmers mediate climate change and shrinking water resources.