Checking emails between flights at the airport, I was excited to see long-awaited reviews for a paper I had submitted with my Ph.D. adviser. It was an editorial in which I proposed a framework for identifying and mitigating conflict between urban coyotes and people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Based on my thesis research, it contained more of my heart and soul than any I had previously written. But the reviews were resoundingly negative. I appreciated the valid scientific criticisms, but I struggled with comments questioning our qualifications and expertise. One in particular froze me: “The authors are naïve about homelessness.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Following a tumultuous home life, I spent my late teenage years and early 20s in and out of homelessness, sometimes living on the street, camping illegally, and living in a car. I earned a 2-year college diploma while working full time and living in an unheated camper without water or power through Canadian winters. I finished my undergraduate degree while working as a wilderness guide, camping through the summers and retreating to a different moldy basement bedroom each winter. Some combination of stubbornness, inertia, and a genuine curiosity about the natural world kept me going. I loved time outdoors, watching animals. I wanted a job where I could ask and answer my own ecological questions