I knew I wanted to study animals when I was 7 and was given my first pet, a black and white cat I named Sylvester. Much of my childhood was spent training and getting to know animals of various kinds. I attended Reed College where I worked in the animal colony facility, conducted studies on pigeons, rats, toddlers, and college students, and conducted a senior thesis on three of these species. Next came graduate school in experimental psychology where I continued working with birds and also tried to cobble together a neuroscience program for myself in a university system that only had neuroanatomy courses in the medical school. My PhD work was featured in the New York Times Science section and I acquired an NIH postdoctoral fellowship to work with monkeys in the neurobiology department of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. My first job was at Carleton College after a practice interview as part of my postdoctoral training.  About 10 years after arriving at Carleton, a colleague from another university offered cotton top tamarins to me to study and I grabbed the opportunity. The rest, as they say, is history, my history.