Sara has been working full time for part of each year at the AAVSO since 1990. Her interest in astronomy began in high school where she formed an astronomy club, began making her own telescope, and attended an astronomy camp at the University of Iowa.

Sara then went on to receive her BA degree in Physics and Astronomy from Smith College in 1980, but not before spending a summer working as an intern at the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket with Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit. It was through her variable star work there that she had the privilege of being introduced to Dr. Janet Mattei. Along with the other MMO students, she delivered a paper at the AAVSO Annual Meeting that fall.

Immediately after graduation from Smith, Sara worked at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston training astronauts in guidance, propulsion, and flight control systems using the space shuttle simulators. During these years, she also became involved as a volunteer with the restoration and sailing of the square-rigged ship, Elissa, in Galveston, Texas. Eventually, she got itchy feet and the desire to go to sea became so strong that she resigned from NASA and spent the next two years working on a ship in the South Pacific and traveling around Australia.

Upon her return to the US, Sara began working at the AAVSO, tackling any project that Janet had for her. Some of these projects included preparing data for publication, finding errors and making corrections to individual observations, re-writing the Visual Observing Manual for Variable Stars, and setting up the membership mailing list database. Most recently she has been working on the data validation project as an active member of the Validation Team.

At the same time, Sara continues to pursue her sea-going career. She now holds a Coast Guard mates license and works on sail training vessels 2-3 months each year, often helping to teach celestial navigation to college students during sea semester programs. In the summer, she can often be found cruising the Maine coast with a bunch of nephews in her 1936 Friendship Sloop, Flying Jib.