ABOUT ME
Curious by nature. Builder by choice.
My fascination with technology started with a television dial. Turn it, and something changed on the screen. Long before I knew how any of it worked, I loved that connection: do something, see a result.
Years later, working on the sales side at Stack Overflow, I surrounded myself with computer scientists and software developers. They kept telling me, “You know you could do what we’re doing if you really taught yourself.” I hadn’t started with a formal computer science education. The possibility that I could learn to build things myself was the spark.
I took a leap of faith into Turing’s demanding backend engineering program and learned Ruby and Rails. What began as curiosity became a different career—and a habit of asking what I could learn to make next.
ARTS / BETTER EXPERIENCED TOGETHER
A trip already booked. A very good invitation.
A few weeks after meeting my now-wife, I asked if she wanted to join a Goose and Billy Strings trip through Europe that I already had booked. It was an early invitation to a pretty big adventure. Now we enjoy seeing live music around the world, wherever we happen to be.
Outside of live music, my wife and I have caught films in Paris, Bogotá, Mexico City, London, and elsewhere. We’re also members of San Francisco’s de Young Museum, and enjoy visiting whenever we can. These days, we’re lucky to make regular visits to the legendary Cameo in St. Helena, too.
Goose and the Grateful Dead are in constant rotation. Living near where the Dead began makes it especially fun to feel that community throughout the Bay Area.
While I’m working, the soundtrack might move from Ezra Collective to Metallica. Between meetings, I sometimes get an energy boost from Broadway musicals. That last one is my wife’s influence.
SPORTS / PLAYING, WATCHING & HAVING OPINIONS
Basketball, a rewarding detour, and a new favorite sideline.
I played competitive basketball through high school in Florida. Any excuse to spend time in a gym instead of outside in the humidity was a good one. Sports also taught me how to lose: look honestly at what happened, take responsibility for my part, and come back ready to improve. A bad game isn’t an identity, but it does give you something to work on.
The chapter people rarely guess: I was a collegiate cheerleader at the University of Florida. Friends told me the team needed strong guys for stunting. The scholarship and the chance to be a student-athlete made it an opportunity worth taking.
I’ll happily make the case that Nikola Jokić is the best basketball player in the world and Nathan MacKinnon is the greatest hockey player of his generation. Those are opinions, and I’m happy to debate them. I also support my wife’s Bay Area teams—unless we have a conflicting matchup.
A newer obsession is watching my wife coach high school varsity volleyball in Napa. I’m excited about eventually helping with analytics and exploring how AI could support her coaching tools. For now, it’s something I’m looking forward to exploring.
NAPA / ALWAYS SOMETHING IN PROGRESS
Software, a garden shed, and 22 fruit trees.
Since moving to Napa, making things has meant enterprise software and frontier AI models, but also building storage racks, working on turning our garden shed into an office, and looking after the 22 fruit trees on our property. The shed is still a work in progress.
I enjoy improving what’s around me, whether that means working through a software problem or figuring out the next step in a home project. I like being able to point to something at the end and say, “That works better now.”
AI / POSSIBILITY WITH RESPONSIBILITY
A shorter distance from idea to useful.
What first drew me into engineering was the realization that I could learn to make something myself. AI opens that possibility in new ways. I believe it will shape the future, but what excites me most is what people can build with it today.
Building these systems has also made me think carefully about judgment and accountability. Being able to make a system do something isn’t the same as deciding it should. I’m interested in both the possibilities and where human responsibility needs to remain.