Rochelle joined the NSP laboratory team in January 2004.  Beforehand, Rochelle was working as a volunteer for both the Entomology Department at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and for the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.  At Te Papa, Rochelle was primarily working in the entomology laboratory, identifying and classifying pitfall trap samples of insects from New Caledonia.  At Karori Wildlife Sanctuary Rochelle was working in the field, maintaining bird feed stations and monitoring new arrivals.

Rochelle has a Bachelor of Science majoring in Zoology, from Massey University and after completing a paper in entomology, she developed a keen interest in the subject.  She attended the New Zealand Biosecurity Institute's NETS conferences in 2005 & 2007, as well as the NZ Ecological Society and the Ecological society of Australia’s joint conference in 2006, and the Entomological Society of New Zealand’s conference in 2009.  She has taken part in mosquito identification training workshops, both at the Napier and Wellington sites. Rochelle has also attended the MoH training courses National Biosecurity and Quarantine Training Course in 2006 and Advanced Boarder Health Mosquito Surveillance workshop 2008. Rochelle is an accredited person under the Biosecurity Act 1993.

She has assumed the roles of primary entomologist, data manager and auditor of the laboratory's results for the specimens received at the lab from various surveillance programmes.