About Me

I graduated from Granby High School in the advanced studies program. During high school I found a passion for photography and I was able to participate in exhibitions at the Hermitage Museum and the Scope. I also had the opportunity to have one of my poems published (don’t ask, it was awkward and angst filled and if I am lucky, all copies have been destroyed).

After graduating from high school, I joined the United States Marine Corps. I wish I could say it had been out of a sense of civic duty or responsibility. But the truth was a sense of adventure and a desire to travel away from home. Training in MCRD Parris Island, Camp Lejeune, and Fort Jackson and then to Camp Kinser in Okinawa Japan and finishing up in MCB Quantico, Virginia. It was a learning and growing experience. The training, the structure, and the leadership. I learnt the difference between following and leading and what it takes to be a leader as well as responsibility as both a follower and a leader of Marines.

After leaving the Marines, it was an easy transition to the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office. The training was in line with previous training I had had in the Corps. The structure was less formal than the hierarchy of the military and introduced me to being not only a civilian but a leader amongst civilians. I had the opportunity to gain management and leadership experience while running floors in the jail and as a PROBE team leader. While I have an appreciation for the organization and enjoyed working with many of my peers, the nature of the jail and law enforcement was beyond my expectations. I decided a career change was in order and started attending college.

I graduated from Tidewater Community College with a major in computer science and transferred to Old Dominion University to pursue my bachelor’s degree. While attending ODU I had the opportunity to attend my first hackathon, Develop Hampton Roads. I used the experience and knowledge to help ODU host its own hackathon. One of the sponsors of the ODU event was the campus Association of Computing Machinery, of which I became the president. Another sponsor was the Strome Entrepreneurial Center, for whom I am now employed as a student worker.

Old Dominion University Extracurriculars

1. In March 2015, I chaired and helped organize Old Dominion University's first hackathon.
2. In April 2015, I presented and took first place at the 2015 Spring Simulation Multi-Conference, an international model and simulation conference. The app, developed in conjunction with Eastern Virginia Medical School and Norfolk State University, took first.
3. Chaired the fall 2015 Old Dominion University collegiate hackathon, Monarchs Hack the Campus. Unfortunately the event was canceled when Old Dominion University closed the campus due to expected flooding from Hurricane Joaquin.

Current projects

1. Association for Computing Machinery - I am the current ODU campus president and am currently working on planning fall & spring events for the 2015-2016 school year.
   1. Spring Hackathon - helping plan and lay the ground work for the sping hackathon.
   2. Hackathon Council - coordinating with other student organizations that would have an interest in hackathons to start a council to plan future events.
   3. GitHub & Portfolio Site Workshop - teach students the basics of using GitHub, the concepts of version control, and then help them with the basics of HTML & CSS.
   4. Plan Web Development Workshop for Spring- teach students JavaScript and help them add functionality to their portfolios.
   5. Guest Speakers - field experts and researchers.
   6. Have Google virtually on campus.
2. Graduate.

Two Year Plan

1. Get a job in -
   1. Working with self driving cars.
   2. Working with machine learning.
   3. Working with mobile applications.
2. Pay off my student loans.
3. Learn more about PMP and mobile UI/UX with productivity tools.
4. Work on platform for productivity tools in a self driving car.