Problem Solving
Creative problem solving has always been a passion of mine and is one of my primary interests in software development.
Challenges are made to be overcome, puzzles are made to be solved, and tedious tasks are made to be automated!
Community Leadership
I have years of experience in professional community leadership as an organizer of North Bay Fusion, a dance venue in Sebastopol, California.
Informally, my leadership experience goes back to high school, as president of the Writer's Club. In collage, I was President of the Social Dance club and I.C.C. Representative of our competitive Hip-Hop dance team.
In my personal life, I find or create community wherever I go, from creating study-groups, to organizing events and activities, I believe interpersonal connections are at the heart of any healthy environment.
Instruction and Mentorship
I have many years of experience teaching, starting from childhood, helping mentor less experienced martial arts students.
In high school, I began teaching dance and parkour on an amateur level. After graduation, I coached my old wrestling team and eventually began teaching dance professionally. I teach locally, statewide, and now internationally as well.
Project Management
In 2016, I was placed at the head of PBHS's Silent Partner product, answering directly to the corporation's vice-president. In that time, I grew what was a failing product, months overdue for delivery, and no working prototype, to a multi-million dollar asset endorsed by the American Dental Association and found in dental offices around the world.
Professional Integrity
I believe every task a person completes is a reflection of their character. I take pride in my work as an extension of my own integrity and pride in myself as an engineer.
I am a firm believer in the "Find time to do it right or find time to do it twice" mentality and thus am committed to pushing my best work every time.
I believe the user experience should influence development, not the other way around. This means the end-user of a product should not have to change their behavior or struggle with unintuitive interfaces just because it was easier to write that way. I am an engineer. Solving big problems is what I do, and "just okay" is never good enough.
Technical and Layman's Communication
My years of professional help-desk experience have fostered an acute talent at explaining highly technical concepts in simple layman's terms. This ranges from simply discussing the hows and whys of a subject to training 80-year-old customers to edit their own websites.
In addition the this, I am experienced in the high-level communication required to effectively and efficiently express ideas to other developers, making me a valuable asset in presenting ideas interdepartmentally and helping clarify things for new engineers or bring them up to speed on current projects.
