Kaitlyn is from Long Island, New York and grew up collecting shells, sea glass, and identifying the local creatures along the shoreline. In high school she began working with a local cooperative to restore local bay scallops and her love of science and restoration was firmly established. From there she went on to get her BSc in Marine Sciences at Stony Brook University, NY, USA where she met her graduate supervisor, Prof. Bradley Peterson. She joined his lab as an undergraduate, working with the benthic community ecology lab for several years before joining the lab as a graduate student.  After a year chasing invasive pine beetles in the nearby forests, she began her MSc degree investigating the habitat suitability of eelgrass, Zostera marina, through water quality sampling and spatial distribution modeling.  While at Stony Brook, she participated and led several water sampling projects, trawling and epifauna surveys, bay scallop surveys and restoration, mapping of seagrass on Long Island via drone and plane, and worked closely with many local and national agencies.

After completing her Msc in 2020, Kaitlyn moved to KAUST, taking a position as the RSRC Field Technician and then Research Specialist in the Berumen Lab. While her love of seagrass has not faded, her research has expanded into assisting with many megafauna projects (whale sharks, guitarfish, sea turtles), GIS/mapping and spatial analysis, baseline monitoring, and comprehensive BRUVS projects.