Early Life & High School
Became a Duct Tape Engineer
I made full body armor and masks out of duct tape before I launched an online business to sell hand-made duct tape wallets and accessories.
Crafts
DuctTape
EarlyLife
First Summer Band Camp Performance
Participated in Summer Band Camp, playing bass guitar, switching to drums, guitar, and vocals for other songs, including ‘Seven Nation Army’ by The White Stripes.
Music
Performance
EarlyLife
Junior Achievement Award
Received this award from the Masonic Society for academic excellence and outstanding character during my junior year of high school.
Award
HighSchool
Placed 2nd at DECA State and 1st at FBLA Regionals
Competed in DECA and FBLA in high school. Won 1st in Computer Problem Solving at FBLA Regionals 2013, and 2nd in Entrepreneurship Written at DECA State 2013 on a 2-person team. Competed at DECA Nationals in Anaheim, CA.
Competition
HighSchool
Business
Joined NHS and Student Council
Volunteered at high school sports events and local non-profits as a member of National Honor Society and Student Council.
CommunityService
Volunteering
Co-Valedictorian at SEBS @ Pueblo County High School
Graduated as co-valedictorian from the School of Engineering and Biomedical Science at Pueblo County High School.
Academic
HighSchool
Graduation
2013 Boettcher Scholar
Awarded the Boettcher Scholarship in March 2013, a merit-based scholarship covering full cost of college attendance at any institution in Colorado.
Scholarship
Award
College
Colorado College (Undergraduate)
First Theatre Role and Acapella Group
During my first week at Colorado College, I auditioned for and was accepted into the Theatre Department’s production of MacBeth (playing Murderer #2) and Room 46, the co-ed a cappella group.
Theatre
Performance
Music
Extracurriculars
GRAVL named one of the ‘Greatest Indie Games’
Independently developed a puzzle platformer game for Android called GRAVL, dedicating over 800 hours in Java without a third-party game engine. The game received over 10,000 downloads and an average rating of 4.5 stars on the Google Play Store. It was featured on greatestindiegames.com.
GameDev
IndieGame
Award
Volunteer at La Puente
Volunteered at La Puente, a local non-profit in Alamosa, CO, as part of a week-long event sponsored by the Boettcher Foundation.
CommunityService
Volunteering
Euclid Scholarship in Mathematics and Computer Science
Received the Euclid Scholarship ($2,000) in May 2014, requiring nomination by a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, to further pursue interests in Computer Science.
Scholarship
ComputerScience
Award
Alpha Lambda Delta Induction
Inducted into Alpha Lambda Delta in October 2014, an honor society requiring a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.5 as a first-year undergraduate.
HonorSociety
Academic
Co-Founded the CC Coding Club
Co-founded and served as Co-Chair of the Colorado College Coding Club. Under my leadership, it became the first official club at CC to gain corporate sponsorship (with 5 corporate sponsors) and helped 7 members secure jobs or internships.
Leadership
ComputerScience
Club
Community
Big Idea Finalist
Co-founded and developed Friendlier, a mobile application designed to suggest smart replies and prioritizing contacts from multiple social platforms. The project was a finalist in the Colorado College ‘Big Idea’ startup pitch competition.
Startup
MobileApp
Entrepreneurship
Competition
Software Engineer at Baber Technical Consulting
Served as lead developer on Badger, an enterprise software integration that reduced average volunteer wait time 10x (from >30m to <3m) at the Alameda County Community Food Bank, saving thousands of $/month.
WebDevelopment
SoftwareEngineering
Project
Consulting
Boettcher International Education Grant and Gilman Scholarship
Awarded a $10,000 Boettcher International Education Grant and a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to study Computer Science abroad at the Aquincum Institute of Technology in Budapest, Hungary, during Fall 2015. Developed a passion for Computer Vision and learned to code in Prolog and C++.
StudyAbroad
ComputerScience
Scholarship
AI
ComputerVision
Keller Research Grant: European Theatre
With fellow CC student Anubrat Prasai, traveled to five European countries and attended a dozen performances to research theatre’s relationship with European culture and politics. Funded by a $2,000 Keller Family Venture Grant. Pictured: Waiting for Godot in Paris, FR.
Theatre
Research
Travel
Encounter with Red Cross translator for Syrian Refugees
During my European travels, I met Joe and his daughter Chaurice on a train from Vienna to Berlin through Czechia. Joe, a Red Cross translator, shared a tragic story of a 12-year-old Syrian boy who lost his family escaping on a raft to Greece, providing deep insight into the struggles faced by refugees.
PersonalExperience
SocialIssue
Travel
RefugeeCrisis
Theatre Thesis: IRIS-31, A Live VR Performance
Designed, developed, wrote, and directed IRIS-31, a VR play for my senior thesis. It combined an HTC Vive headset, Xbox Kinect body-motion tracking, and Leap Motion hand-motion tracking for real-time actor-participant interaction in a virtual world.
VirtualReality
Theatre
Innovation
Project
PerformanceArt
CS Senior Thesis: Universal Markdown for Play Scripts
Invented a semi-supervised machine-learning algorithm variant for my Computer Science senior thesis. This algorithm automatically converts smartphone-captured photographs of play scripts and film screenplays into universal markup language.
ComputerScience
MachineLearning
Project
Innovation
MobileApp
Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree Program
Accepted into the very first cohort of this 9-month online educational program (1 of 250 accepted out of 11,000 worldwide applicants), fully covered by an Educational Enrichment Grant from the Boettcher Foundation. Learned skills necessary to write software for autonomous vehicles.
Education
AI
Robotics
Automation
J. Juan Reid Award
Received the J Juan Reid Award in 2017, presented to the senior best combining scholastic excellence and involvement in extracurricular activities.
Award
Academic
Extracurriculars
Steven Janke Award in Computer Science
The first-ever recipient of the Steven Janke Award in Computer Science in 2017, the highest honor in the department, named after its founder. Awarded for ‘unusual talent and achievements in computer science, an unusual breadth and depth of accomplishments, and high grades.’
Award
ComputerScience
Broadway Theatre League Award
Received the Broadway Theatre League Award in 2017, given to an outstanding senior in the Theatre and Dance Department.
Award
Theatre
Battle of the Bands Performance
Performed with my friends in the band Ursa Minor at the Battle of the Bands in Spring 2017, playing ‘Radio/Video’ by SOAD.
Music
Performance
Band
Phi Beta Kappa Induction
Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 2017, the oldest academic honor society in the US, celebrating and advocating excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.
HonorSociety
Academic
Distinction in Computer Science & Theatre, Summa cum laude
Graduated with Distinction in Computer Science and Distinction in Theatre, with a 4.0 GPA in 2017. I was one of five students in my class to receive Summa cum laude, conferred by special faculty vote.
Academic
Honor
Distinction
Singing at Graduation Ceremony for Oprah
Performed as a choir singer at the Colorado College graduation ceremony, notably with Oprah in attendance.
Performance
Music
College
First Trip to Nepal
Traveled to Nepal for the first time in June-July 2017 with my best friend Anubrat, who showed me around Kathmandu, Pokhara, Dhangadhi, and Charikot, offering an intimate perspective of the culture and political process.
Travel
PersonalExperience
Culture
Books on the Beach with College Alumni
A memorable and unique experience during Summer 2018, discussing books and their relevance to current events at Meryl and Bob Selig’s beach house in Rio del Mar for a Colorado College alumni event with guest speaker Professor of Economics Dan Johnson.
PersonalExperience
College
CC Faces of Innovation
Selected as one of CC’s Faces of Innovation, an elite group of students, professors, and alumni who are leaders of innovation. Recognized for combined efforts in creating the CC Coding Club and founding/developing a mobile app that helps actors memorize their lines.
Award
Innovation
Leadership
CC 5 Under 25
Named one of CC’s 5 under 25, a group of alumni recognized as young leaders in their field.
Award
Innovation
Leadership
Early Career at Google
Google Engineering Resident
Accepted a full-time job at Google as a Software Engineer, starting in the Engineering Residency in Mountain View, California. This required over a year of intense preparation, one rejection and 8 interviews before being accepted. Successfully converted onto my first rotation team, effectively graduating 6 months early from the residency program.
Career
SoftwareEngineering
Wrote & Deployed a Matching Algorithm to find a Roommate
Independently developed RoomM8.io, a full-stack web and mobile app designed to help newly-hired employees find roommates. It featured a matching algorithm on a secure, searchable database, OAuth authentication, and user registration. Approximately 50 new Google employees registered, resulting in at least 5 successful matches, including myself and Tony, the best roommate I ever had.
WebApp
MobileApp
Project
Community
Tech Lead for GlassPane MVP
Within 6 months of starting, I was entrusted with the Tech Lead role for GlassPane, an internal metrics platform for Google Cloud. Proposed the project idea to an Engineering Director who funded it. Designed and launched the GlassPane MVP (Minimum Viable Product), creating an interactive proof of concept overnight and collaborating across teams.
Leadership
SoftwareEngineering
Project
Launch of GlassPane v1 with Microservices Architecture
Launched GlassPane v1 with new UI features and a backend microservices architecture. Spearheaded collaboration with the CorpSSO team to implement the first and only known way for internal GAE apps to pass JWT Tokens through UberProxy, enabling communication with internal services. This new architecture achieved a 78% reduction in monthly $ cost and greatly reduced toil for onboarding new metric providers.
SoftwareEngineering
Architecture
Project
CostSavings
Joined Alphabeat, one of Google’s Acapella Groups
Sang for two years with Alphabeat, Google’s a cappella group, including a solo performance for over 500 people at a Techapella concert in October 2018. This performance led to my first professional studio recording and a feature on an album released on Spotify.
Music
Performance
Community
Second Trip to Nepal
Traveled to Nepal for the second time in January 2019 with my buddy Ted for our mutual friend Anubrat’s wedding.
Travel
PersonalExperience
Friendship
Co-Presented at Google Cloud Next ‘19 in SF & London
Co-presented ‘Monolith to Microservices: Google Cloud Next ‘19’ at Google Cloud Next 2019 in San Francisco (to an audience of 500 customers) and London (to an audience of 334). My talks received overwhelmingly positive feedback, with 90% positive survey responses.
PublicSpeaking
CloudComputing
Microservices
Event
Promoted to L4: Software Engineer III
Promoted in November 2019 and assumed the role of UI Tech Lead of REL360 Goals. In the first year, I designed and implemented an Angular web app frontend that secured the product’s success, saving 56.1 SWE years in toil reduction across 90% of Cloud revenue streams. I also taught Angular development & test best practices to 14 engineers and guided 3 release engineers to convert to SWE.
Leadership
SoftwareEngineering
Frontend
Mentorship
MP5 Member of the Month
Named ‘Member of the Month’ at the Google MP5 Gym by Exos Coach Lucas Dunham for leadership and perseverence.
Fitness
PersonalExperience
Community
Turdle.xyz - Wordle Clone with Animated Turtles
Developed Turdle.xyz, a Wordle clone featuring animated turtles instead of letters. It includes a mathematical permutation generator that guarantees a unique daily sequence for 42 years. The game peaked at 9.5K daily active users and still maintains 1.3K monthly active users 2.5 years post-launch.
GameDev
WebApp
TypeScript
React
Project
Promoted to L5: Senior Software Engineer
Promoted in November 2023 and expanded responsibilities as UI Tech Lead for 3 internal product teams with 17 frontend engineers. Designed and led implementation of new features that reduced toil by 1.5 SWE years across 90% of Cloud revenue streams in 6 months, projected to save 18.5 SWE years in 1 year.
Leadership
SoftwareEngineering
Frontend
Co-TL of GCPR Platform
Stepped into a Co-TL opportunity to lead the GCP Reliability Platform, aiming to improve development velocity. Led efforts to define quality bars, reduce testing toil (up to 50% of dev time), and promote UI foundation shared components. Also led the Goals maintenance effort, reducing headcount allocation from 7 to 0.5 SWEs per quarter.
Leadership
SoftwareEngineering
Platform
Nashville Young Leaders Conference
One of 100 young leaders across the world hand-picked to attend a conference hosted by Marshall Goldsmith, the #1 executive coach in the world, in the great city of Nashville, TN.
Networking
Leadership
PersonalDevelopment
Google Farewell and Reflections
After 7.5 years at Google, decided to leave to pursue a startup opportunity. Reflected on the journey, expressing gratitude for experiences and lessons learned, including overcoming burnout, navigating corporate politics, and learning the importance of setting boundaries and prioritizing authenticity.
Career
Reflection
Startup
Transition to Stash & Beyond
Joined Stash as Engineer #5
Embarked on a new chapter by joining Stash in March 2025 as a Software Engineer. The experience has been incredibly positive, offering a flexible, remote-friendly, get-things-done work environment with minimal bureaucracy and a strong emphasis on psychological safety. Excited to work in open source on a new tech stack.
Career
Startup
SoftwareEngineering
RemoteWork
Learned to Drive an ATV @ Stash On-site
Experienced riding an ATV for the first time at my first annual company on-site with Stash in March 2025. Turns out Google isn’t the only company with neat perks!
PersonalExperience
Startup
Personal Development & Health Journey
Health Transformation and Overcoming Eating Disorders
Embarking on a journey of significant health transformation, including initially losing 75 lbs and building muscle for 2 years, followed by a period of undereating and rapid weight loss after the pandemic, leading to hospitalization for edema and near kidney failure. Through self-compassion, letting go of restrictive diets, and focusing on internal validation, I overcame disordered eating behaviors and returned to a healthy weight without obsessing over food or body image. This journey highlighted the importance of trusting myself and consistent self-care.
PersonalGrowth
Health
Wellness
Resilience
Developing Grit and a Growth Mindset
Attributed my escape from poverty to grit – defined as ‘passion and perseverance for very long-term goals,’ having ‘stamina,’ and working hard for ‘years.’ Embraced a growth mindset, the belief that failure is not a permanent condition, enabling me to persist through numerous rejections, including an initial rejection from Google despite a referral.
PersonalGrowth
Resilience
Motivation
LifeLesson