A Little About Me

Introduction

If you are curious about this thumbnail photo, there is a bit of an explanation I need to make: on the left is the only photo I have of myself in scrubs (joined by my now wife and our dog, Pongo), on the right is a picture of my speaking as a conference (shoutout to Commit Your Code). The journey between these two images is a pretty interesting one.

Starting from Scratch

When I left for college, I had two options for my future in my head: I was either going to be a professional baseball player or I was going to go to medical school and become a doctor; this made perfect sense because I was arriving on campus with a spot on the baseball team and a whole semester of biology classes laid out. Unfortunately, that plan very quickly imploded: within my first semester of college baseball I was completely burned out and was having knee surgery, along with that I had successfully failed my first biology class.

I moved back home, got a job working as an optometry assistant, and was completely lost on what my plan for the future was. I was effectively starting from scratch.

December 2021. My stepdad forwarded me a Reddit post about a free software engineering bootcamp with a group called 100Devs. I had always been tech adjacent (video games, social media, typing, etc.) but never to that extent. But, at this point in my life, there wasn't much at risk from simply trying.

Hands on Keyboard → First Role

January 2022. The bootcamp started and I absolutely fell in love with development. The ability to type something into a computer and have something, a solution, come to life. I knew this was what I wanted to do with my career, so the grind started. I would keep up with the streams at night in between classes, I would bring my computer with me to work and code on my lunch breaks, I was constantly thinking about the next time I was able to get my hands on a keyboard. While I was learning, I started to try to put my name out there for some potential roles as well.

June 2022. I landed my first role in tech six months out from my first line of code. It was a design support role for a healthcare digital marketing and patient acquisition platform. I quickly jumped into the fire, pushing boundaries, taking on more and more tasks, and getting accustomed to a full-time tech role at 19. Eventually, I began carving a new role for myself at my company: enterprise design support, working with large healthcare organizations like Mint Dentistry, USMD, GI Alliance, and more.

August 2022. I was officially promoted to a frontend design and development role. Not only would I be taking on individual clients from concept all the way to launching a custom frontend for them, but I was still actively engaged with our enterprise clients. I would continuously elevate my responsibilities and work at this role: from contributing to 40% of all website launches within the span of a year to being elevated to a lead developer and designer for our enterprise clients.

May 2024. I was laid off from my first company in tech... five months before my wedding day. I was thrust into a job hunt that I was completely unprepared for and proceeded to scramble at an attempt to get a job as quickly as I could (post for another day). Thousands of applications a day, cutting corners, staying up to absurd hours of the morning and waking up a few hours later just to do it again. August 2024. I got offered my previous role back from my original company. I took the offer, showed up on the first day, got my laptop back and a recap of updates from my clients; I distinctly remember sitting in my car at the end of the day and telling myself: I will not let that happen to me again. Not the layoff, but being so utterly unprepared and unfocused on my career.

Investment → Second Role

From that point on, I completely shifted my approach to my career. I quickly got plugged into development communities like 100Devs and Dallas Software Developers, I started making content and writing about my thoughts, and expanding my baselines in development (backend development, data and databases, devops, etc.). From this, I started to get a lot of traction: my first speaking engagement came at a Night of UX/UI event with the Dallas Software Developers. From there, I was consistently working to pour into new developers, engage with the community, and continue to push myself to become a better developer.

Then, a new role came up within the community that resonated with me. I found myself in multiple interviews with this organization, and finally: March 2025. I accepted a full stack development role. Another healthcare organization, this time working within the IDR process. I found unique situations with this role: inheriting a contractor-built application, leading a complete overhaul and restructure, and quickly became the SME of the application domain. In my first review cycle at the company, I was promoted.

During this time, my community and content involvement didn't slow down. I have now been able to speak at multiple conferences including React Summit and Commit Your Code, became the youngest guest on the freeCodeCamp podcast, and continued to post and engage with the development community.

What Am I Doing Now?

As of today, I am leading engineering for two projects; one of which I took from an initial concept all the way to approval for a greenfield application. My daily work includes architecture authoring, hands-on development, and I am still actively speaking, posting, and engaging with the community as well.

Still trying to get better every single day.

Outside of the Code

As mentioned previously, I am now married to my high school sweetheart, Kiera. If we aren't playing with our dog or taking care of our other animals (ask me about our frogs), I still love keeping up with an assortment of sports (baseball, football, soccer, tennis, you name it). My hobbies can range from coding (doesn't count as work if I enjoy it), to running and golfing, to collecting Pokémon cards and other trinkets. We consistently attend and serve at our local church, including speaking for a wide range of audiences.