Todd graduated from Brigham Young University, majoring in Microbiology, and went on to earn a M.S. in Plant Genetics from Iowa State University and a Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the Medical College of Virginia. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado Mental Retardation Research Center. He has been an Instructor in the Biology Department at Brigham Young University – Idaho since 1998.

In 2015, he became involved in active learning, and attended his first TBL Conference. He has been a fan of team-based learning ever since, incorporating it into his upper division Molecular Biology course for undergraduates.