Becca Jackson spent a good deal of her formative years on the coastal waters of New England—in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Her first jobs as a dockhand and sailing instructor set her on an ocean-themed career. As an undergrad at Yale, she majored in physics and dabbled in astrophysics and particle physics research before finding fluid dynamics. In 2010, she started her Ph.D. in physical oceanography in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, combining her longstanding interests in physics and the ocean with a budding interest in climate. Jackson works with WHOI scientist Fiamma Straneo, and her research focuses on the interaction of the ocean with the Greenland Ice Sheet. Her mentor for this article was Paul Voosen, a science journalist at The Chronicle of Higher Education.