Dr. Laura Gray, a Southern gal, was born and raised in Louisiana and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Laura grew up in Long Beach, Mississippi, and graduated from Long Beach High School in 1988. From there, she went on to college at the University of Louisiana at Monroe where she earned her Bachelor's degree in secondary education with credentials in social studies and English for grades 7-12. She taught a year of junior high in Louisiana, a year of Job Corps in Gulfport, MS, and four years at Hancock High School in Kiln, MS (most famous for being the home of Bret Favre of Green Bay Packers football fame). After finishing her master's degree in school counseling, she spent the next 8 years as the counselor of a large K-5 school back in Long Beach and was there when Hurricane Katrina blew the school away in 2005.
By 2007, Laura was able to take early retirement, where she stayed home with her 3 children and worked on her doctorate in Instructional Design for Online Learning, which was completed in 2015. Since then, she has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in instructional design and has developed a variety of courses and trainings.
In the summer of 2019, after having lived in Belize for 2 1/2 years and the Yucatan for 6 years, Laura and her family moved back to the States where they chose the Treasure Valley as their home. Since then, both of their sons, ages 22 and 24, have left Mississippi and joined them, and their daughter, who is 19, is working full time and figuring out what she wants to do.
When she's not working and doing family things with the husband and kids, Laura enjoys traveling, shopping, reading, watching shows on Netflix, and spending time with friends and her two dogs, Dany and Saki, as well as her cat Xander.