I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, in a time full of changes, dreams, and nightmares. I did my undergraduate at Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, a campus within a botanical garden, which lies in the premontane cloud forest of the Caracas suburbs. I went to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, where I developed and funded my dream PhD research project in my home country while learning about central Texas landscapes and herps. After a three year Postdoctoral Research Associate stint at Colorado State University, a few gigs as an instructor/coordinator for the Organization for Tropical Studies, and a one-year postdoctoral position in Quito, Ecuador, I started out as a new professor at IKIAM University in the small town of Tena, in the Amazonian Napo province of Ecuador. Since 2021, I am a Full Professor at Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica in Ambato, Ecuador, a place surrounded by active volcanoes and faults in a stunning Andean landscape.