Amy received a Bachelors of Arts in Biology at Reed College in Portland, OR in 2016. For her undergraduate senior thesis, she studied a virulence mechanism of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli with Dr. Jay L. Mellies. After graduating, she worked in the Mellies lab for 2 years further characterizing the mechanism of a plasmid-encoded virulence factor PerC. With a developing interest in eukaryotic cell biology, Amy took a job in the Reed biology lab of Dr. Derek A. Applewhite, where she studied the regulation of non-muscle myosin II in Drosophila S2 cells. In her time as a research associate and lab manager at Reed, she worked closely with undergraduates in lab and as a staff mentor for a journal club and a COVID mental health outreach volunteer.