About Me

Born and raised in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I spent my childhood in the redwoods surrounded by creative, technical, and independent people. Some folks were hippies, Lockheed Martin employees, or doomsday preppers (or some combination of the three).

Growing up my mother encouraged me to read history and build Lego spaceships. We often would watch movies like the Princess Bride or the Empire Strikes Back. Sometimes she would be up late listening to audiobooks and doing cross stitch. She is a master craftsperson who imbued in me a creative imagination and the dedication to finish what I started.

Cable TV was unavailable and Nintendo was low-key banned at our house. When I began showing interest in film, visual effects, and video games, my father taught me to write BASIC and got a copy of Photoshop. The skills developed further and I began building websites for the local school district and a community news site. My father created many opportunities for me to steep myself in the digital world at an early age.

Music filled the house growing up. I have an early memory of running through the halls listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way. I participated in musical theater and was often cast in comic relief roles. In college I found the Chico indie rock scene and, under the tutelage of some amazing musical minds, learned theory and songwriting. When my father unexpectedly passed away I dove into the world of home recording and started Transistor State.

Despite having a degree in History, my career has been exclusively in technology. I have worked for a variety of industries including gaming, e-commerce, fin-tech, and customer relations. As a full stack developer I have helped design and build several long lasting and popular applications including BigCommerce and GetFeedback. Putting myself in the mind of the user and building outward has helped me create sticky user interfaces, robust APIs, and reliable distributed systems.

I get up in the morning to make things with code, sound, and pixels.