About Me
Hello!
My main personality trait is my conscientiousness: a desire to be thorough, careful, diligent, and thoughtful about my work and relationships. I’m introverted, yet empathetic. I’m intellectually curious and when I learn new things, I always need to find a way to fit it into my current understanding of the world. I’m usually very relaxed and tend towards agreeability instead of being argumentative, but can staunchly defend the truth, as well as my opinion on “what matters” to the group. I believe in openness in the workplace and prefer relatively flat organizational structures; I believe a great idea can come from anyone. I strive to create pockets of simplicity and order in an otherwise chaotic world. I’m creative, but bounded by a straightforward rationality for what is possible. I care more about “why does it matter” than “how does it work”. I’m always looking for opportunities to improve people’s lives, whether its tiny efficiency improvements in day-to-day life, or larger, more ambitious goals like making space travel affordable.
My Story
I grew up in rural Ohio, in a town of about 800 people. Many nights staring up at the star-filled sky filled me with a sense of wonder for the great beyond, which I have kept until today and is reflected in my love for the cosmos and the ocean.
When I was 10, my family relocated to central Kentucky, to a town of about 45,000, where I finished high school. I was very active with extracurriculars like the school band, where I served as drum major for the marching band, the academic (quiz bowl) team, and sports like soccer and tennis.
After high school I attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. This was my first exposure to engineering and where I fell in love with rockets and aerospace hardware. I found SpaceX in December of 2015 when they landed a first stage Falcon 9 for the first time, and readjusted my classes and extracurriculars to align with aerospace: for example, opting to take an extra class in aerospace propulsion, and working as a paid teaching assistant for fluid mechanics.
I also led the Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Lab, where we built small scale (3-4 meters) carbon fiber rockets with novel payloads like a cold gas thruster system for position and attitude control.
In my final months of university, with my heart set on SpaceX, I had applied to grad school for aerospace engineering and was accepted into programs at Georgia Tech and CU Boulder, and had been offered a fully paid master’s degree at Georgia Tech. On a whim, I applied at SpaceX where I had found a position as a propulsion test engineer that was a good fit for my skillset. It all happened really fast, and within a week I had interviewed, and been offered a full time job in LA!
This started an almost 6 year period of employment with SpaceX in LA. I grew from a new engineer to a “veteran” of the propulsion manufacturing team. SpaceX was such a wonderful place to grow as an engineer due to the extreme amount of ownership and responsibility that is assigned to new engineers, and I learned something new every day. I was continuously humbled by the millions of things that have to go right to be successful in space. The best part by far were the awesome coworkers that I met - never had I been surrounded by such interesting and brilliant people. During these years, my escape from the city became scuba diving the Channel Islands and backpacking the Sierra Nevada.
In December of 2022, I quit my job to follow these passions. I started by backpacking ~540 miles on the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Virginia. I then went on a 7 month trip around Asia, visiting China, Japan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. During this trip I served as a research diver with the Indo Ocean Project in Raja Ampat, Indonesia for 2 months and received my Divemaster certification in the process. Then, I headed over to Koh Tao, Thailand, where I completed my PADI Instructor Development Course and received my license to teach. I spent 7 weeks in Thailand assisting some of the best scuba instructors I’ve ever met, and now feel extremely comfortable teaching on my own.
Now, I’m teaching scuba diving, while keeping a selective eye out for great engineering opportunities that are a good fit for my ethos and the engineering skills I’ve developed over the last 10 years.