Susan is a graduate of Cornell University, where among other projects she wrote and presented a radio program on bird biology while a student there. For 30 years she has been exploring and guiding in the remote corners of the earth. In her early years she guided trips and trained teachers for the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

She started working on expedition cruise ships in 1989 as a natural history lecturer on voyages to such remote areas as the coral reefs of the Caribbean, South Pacific including French Polynesia; the rainforests of Central America and the Amazon; in the High Arctic of Alaska, Russia, Canada, Greenland, British Isles, Norway and the North Pole and in the Antarctic, along the Peninsula, Ross Sea and the Far Side. In 1993 she began to Expedition Lead in these same remote areas. Her keen observations and research helped her to discover new areas where wildlife can be found throughout the Arctic and Antarctic. Susan has lead more then 140 expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic. In 1985, together with her husband (Captain Brad Stahl) Susan developed Northwind Nature Education Opportunities Inc, a non-profit environmental education organization that promotes understanding of remote wilderness areas through teacher and student training workshops and natural history travel programs. In 2004, they also formed the company Expedition Cruise Planning and Logistics that consults to various companies that travel in remote regions of the world. Shore side as a managing director for expedition operations she has been a representative to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, and functioned in the area of recruitment and training of expedition staff and planning and execution of polar expeditions for several private travel companies.