Employee Spotlight: Jessica Ericson

Hello everyone!

In this employee spotlight, I’ll tell you a little more about myself and how I got to be here writing to you all today.

I’m originally from Pueblo, CO and I became interested in archaeology at a young age. My Dad was always into history, and I remember learning about ancient civilizations from him. Having that foundation was great, but it wasn’t until I watched The Mummy with Brendan Fraser that I became obsessed with the past. That movie and other family vacations led to me finding my way into the Anthropology program at Colorado State University (CSU).

While getting my undergrad at CSU I studied under Jason LaBelle and Rich Adams and began to understand the importance of archaeology and how much the past means to different communities. It was in Dr. LaBelle’s Public Archaeology class that I began to realize that I really enjoyed working with the public and connecting people to the history that is all around them. So, I jumped into the world of CRM and have since worked in various states across the western half of the US. I’ve been so fortunate to experience some great archaeology and meet some wonderful archaeologists in the 10 years I’ve been doing fieldwork.

After a couple years in the field, I realized that I wanted to take things up a notch and see how I could get the public involved with archaeology, so I decided to become a tour director. At the time, I thought I could take my two passions of archaeology and travel and mix them into the small niche of archaeo-tourism. I began leading tours in between field projects for tour operators such as Trek America and Intrepid travel. Tour directing for these companies meant that I was driving a 14-passenger van with a trailer attached to it. The tours consisted of up to 13 foreign passengers on trips that lasted anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks long. They were hiking and camping tours that were dotted across the U.S. and Canada. It was a total roller coaster ride, and I loved every minute of it! I have since led tours for the whiskey distillery Stranahan’s and have created my own tours through Community Connections, LLC.

While all the above was happening, I was still doing fieldwork and wanted to learn more to progress my archaeology career. So, I decided to pursue a GIS master’s certificate at the University of Denver. I completed that degree at the end of 2019 and came to work for Metcalf as a GIS tech in June of 2020. I learned so much (Thank you forever to Jesse and Shea!!). I have since stepped down as a GIS tech and work as a field tech now to allow space for Community Connections to grow and expand.