Danielle was born and raised in an average Singaporean family but possesses a more-than-average affinity with nature. She grew up in one of Singapore’s last suburban town Seletar Airbase, which has since been acquired by the government and redeveloped into an aerospace hub. Devoid of screen time due to strict parenting, she spent much of her childhood with her siblings in the yard playing with frangipani flowers in the rain. After an unsuccessful attempt at convincing her mom to adopt their expat neighbour’s golden retriever (as they were moving back to New Zealand), she successfully negotiated to own a catfish she named guai-guai (‘well-behaved’ in Mandarin Chinese) that she saw while accompanying her dad to a shop that sold fighting fish. 

In secondary school, heartbroken from her eviction from Seletar Airbase, she redirected her passion for nature to studying physical geography. She continued to pursue her interest in university, majoring in Environmental Earth Systems Science for her undergraduate degree. Subsequently, she spent two years in a sustainable travel social enterprise and organised learning and volunteering trips for schools and universities in Singapore.

At the time of writing, Danielle is pursuing her MA by Research at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University.