about me

tl;dr:

I'm a seasoned entrepreneur and technical co-founder who helps amazing people get their impactful organizations off the ground.

I enjoy figuring out how things work, making technology approachable & understandable to non-technical people, and doing whatever I can to help get something done (whether that's strategy, executing on a vision, or managing a team).

I'm starting a new role in October as a senior software engineer at Yardstik, and I'm pumped to join a great team working on building background check solutions for gig platforms, marketplaces, and other businesses.

i've got some time, gimme the longer version.

Much like what Marge Simpson thinks about potatoes, I think technology is pretty neat.

Even when I couldn't understand how to do anything on it, I took any chance I could get to be on my family's DOS-powered PC. I made my first website in third grade (and still have source code from websites I created back in 1998). In middle school, I wrote games for the TI-83+ graphing calculator and maintained the internet's largest Ralph Wiggum fan website. I was one of only two kids in my grade who owned a Cybiko. I taught teachers in high school how to use proxy servers to get around our school's firewalls so they could check their own MySpaces during class.

That's not to say I was only a nerd... I played defensive end in football. I threw shotput in track. I loved intramural broomball. I was a drum major in the marching band. I performed and did tech for our school plays and musicals. I was in the National Honor Society. (I guess looking back on that list, maybe I was only a nerd?)

What drives me is to chase the joy I get when I partner up with interesting people to do something cool.

I was lucky enough to get into the University of Minnesota and enter the computer engineering program. A physics midterm went so poorly for me, however, that it made me reconsider my path, opting to study journalism instead. I helped spin up a student-run television broadcast club. I joined a band comprised of professors and got to record an album while the university paid me. I trained for and completed my first marathon with a bunch of other students.

Instead of jumping right into the corporate life after college, I made the most of my journalism degree and worked as a freelance videographer. I ideated, scripted, recorded, edited, and distributed videos for organizations like Pepsi, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the National Academy of Television, and Fox Sports North. (I also did wedding videography which, uh, never again.)

Around the same time, I took a risk and started a custom mobile app consultancy with my friend from high school.

We spent the next ten years building a successful agency, collaborating on cool projects like building self-driving cars and making traffic stops more safe and equitable. In addition to our work with startups, we also built apps for Fortune 500 companies. This meant we got to see how our architectural decisions with our code impacted millions of people.

After ten years of dealing with the ups and downs of owning an agency, I joined another creative agency and spent two years as their Chief Technology Officer helping to support their growing software engineering team. Our main project was to help a large wellness plan administrator transition their crumbling legacy software solutions into a single, modern Ruby on Rails stack.

While working at that agency, advancements in artificial intelligence made it approachable enough for an engineering school dropout like me to figure out how it works. I now give talks and share my opinions on how to use these amazing tools to solve tough problems.

I spent most of 2024 working through some severe anxiety and depression (0/5 stars would not recommend). I'm happy to say I'm in a great headspace now, and I've also landed a new role with Yardstik, a company which provides background checks and similar services. I'm excited to get back to work with a great team and solve some tough product and engineering problems.

okay, cool, that's pretty much all work stuff... what else do you do?

Now that I'm gainfully employed again, I'm focusing on enjoying as much quality time as possible with my wife and kids.

My wife and I have been married for ten years, and we have been on some incredible adventures together. Whether that's exploring Europe and North America, running marathons, singing karaoke, sharing memes, or just chilling on our patio, being with my wife is the part of my life I look forward to the most when I wake up every day.

I'm also digging the time I get to spend watching my kids grow up. My daughter is in third grade, and watching her learn about how the world works is such a treat. My son is a kindergartner, and I'm not entirely sure how that happened so quickly, but I love being able to watch him be his goofy, charismatic, witty self. Those two challenge me every single day to be a better person and I am so grateful for them.

Outside of family time, I'd say my favorite thing to do is to go on walks. I used to be very into running, but now that I'm four meniscus surgeries in, I need to probably be more strategic about how I'm gonna use what's left of them. My brother loaned me his bike recently, so I've been starting to get back on the saddle. There's a new gym scheduled to open near my house in the winter, and I'm eagerly looking forward to joining and doing HIIT workouts there.

Other hobbies that I enjoy include playing the guitar, visiting all the breweries in the state, experimenting with LLMs, learning how to solder and repair old electronics, listening to new music (currently working on a micro site showing off the music I enjoy), watching TV with my wife (current faves include Shōgun, Game Changer, and RuPaul's Drag Race Global All Stars), playing Retro Bowl for iOS (currently on year 160), reading through my Instapaper queue, hanging out with lovely people, and podcasting.

colophon

Here are the tools I used to build this site:

• Ruby on Rails
• Visual Studio Code
• Linode
• Transmit
• 2023 Macbook Pro with an M3 Max (this thing screams)

My goal with this design was to make things as sustainable and fast as possible. There's very minimal Javascript being used on this site, and I also try hard to only use text and emojis instead of images.

This about page was last updated on 2024-09-11.