I was born in Bellingham, Washington, in 2001 and grew up in nearby Ferndale. My mom worked as a nurse and my dad as an engineering project manager, so I grew up around both medical thinking and design work. Much of my childhood was spent building, drawing, and experimenting.
After seeing Iron Man in 2008, I built my first suit from whatever I could find: a trash can, pipe ducts, ski boots, and a great deal of optimism. That early fascination with making things led me into 3D modeling, game development, and eventually selling digital assets through the Unity Asset Store. In high school, I followed a nontraditional education path and completed much of my coursework online, leaving more room to pursue independent projects.
During that period, I met my friend and mentor, Dr. Marc Pierson. Through our conversations, I was introduced more deeply to systems thinking and its application to education and complex social problems. That work eventually led to our speaking at the Congreso de Educación Sistémica in Bogotá, Colombia, and to further collaboration during the early months of COVID-19, when we worked with local Bellingham nonprofits to build CARIN, a community resource coordination platform. The project saw limited adoption but produced a working model for neighborhood-level coordination, and I was honored with the Ken Gass Community Builder Award in late 2020 for that work.
Since then, I have worked at the T-Mobile call center in Bellingham and enrolled at Western Washington University, where I now study psychology and economics. My long-term goal is to contribute to neuroscience by building software, coordinating interdisciplinary work, and eventually developing organizations capable of supporting ambitious research.