I was raised on a mixed crop/livestock farm near Humboldt, Saskatchewan, Canada. I earned Bachelor of Science in Agriculture (BSA) and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Saskatchewan specializing in plant breeding and agronomy. My plant breeding career began as a spring wheat breeder with the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, where I developed three CWRS wheat cultivars, the most notable being McKenzie & Prodigy. McKenzie (1997) was the first doubled haploid wheat cultivar registered in North America. I also made the crosses and did the initial selection work that resulted in CDC Imagine, the first Clearfield wheat in Canada. In 1999, I joined AAFC Lethbridge as the research scientist responsible for western Canadian winter wheat breeding. My areas of concentration were improved agronomics (yield, winter hardiness, height, lodging resistance, test weight), disease and pest resistance (particularly all rusts, FHB, common bunt, wheat curl mite, wheat stem sawfly), and end-use quality to meet diverse and changing customer needs. In 2011, Emerson became the first wheat cultivar of any class in Canada to be rated "resistant" to FHB. AAC Wildfire (2015) is currently the most popular winter wheat in western Canada. Recent cultivars are AAC Network (2019), AAC Vortex (2020), AAC Coldfront (2021) and AAC Overdrive (2022). Cultivars developed at AAFC Lethbridge accounted for 92% of western Canadian winter wheat acres in 2022. To date, I have been the principal developer of 15 spring and winter wheat cultivars, and co-developer of another 15 cultivars of winter wheat, spring wheat and triticale. After 35 years of professional plant breeding, I retired from AAFC in fall 2022, though I continue to serve on various industry committees and advisory boards.