About Me

I am a computer enthusiast who is passionate about solving problems and learning new things. I also enjoy traveling and pursuing the undiscovered.

Education

High School

One of my proudest achievements during my high school career was my involvement with Schoolhouse.world, a free online tutoring platform founded by Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy. I served as a founding member and tutor for the platform. Drew Bent, Co-founder of Schoolhouse.world, acknowledged my significant contribution by stating that I “played a pivotal role in developing the certification system.”

Working on something real outside the classroom made me realize I was ready for the next step. I took the SAT earlier than most, and after seeing my results, my counselor encouraged me to consider starting college ahead of schedule. I had already finished my graduation requirements, and once I received a full ride, the decision to leave high school early came naturally.

The University of Missouri

Living at home while attending university didn’t last long. The daily drive got old fast, so I eventually found a shared apartment near campus and moved out. It was a big transition. Leaving my parents and adjusting to life on my own wasn’t easy, but I also had a new kind of freedom. I could hit the gym on my own schedule, cook whatever I wanted, and host friends whenever. I even adopted a cat. It was one of the most formative and freeing experiences I’ve had.

I was living on my own, but my hometown wasn’t far. I’d head back most weekends to see my parents, my girlfriend, and close friends. Starting college early meant giving up some classic high school moments, but I was glad I still got to experience prom with the people I grew up with.

I really enjoyed my time at university. I met great people, explored new interests, and got a real feel for independent life. It challenged me in all the right ways and gave me the chance to grow, both personally and academically.

During my time at university, I met my girlfriend, Angela. She was studying in my hometown at the local high school for a year as a foreign exchange student from Spain. I met her through mutual high school friends, and we became friends and eventually partners. She would tell me stories about her country and how they live in Spain, and I got jealous but also curious — I wanted to experience other cultures and countries too. Eventually, this curiosity turned into a goal that one day I would leave my home country for a year, just like she did.

Around that same time, I was also trying to figure out what direction I wanted to go academically.

I started out studying mechanical engineering, where I learned AutoCAD and SOLIDWORKS and earned the SOLIDWORKS Associate–Mechanical Design Certificate. But during my free time, I got really into coding. I was building small projects through FreeCodeCamp.org, but they were all stuck on localhost:3000, so I couldn’t share them with anyone outside my computer.

That frustration led me to look into deployment options, which is how I discovered cloud computing. I started learning AWS and launched my apps using EC2 instances. That experience showed me how powerful and important cloud infrastructure is and how much there is to learn.

That’s when I decided to switch from mechanical engineering to cloud computing. I didn’t finish the engineering degree, but I completed all my general education requirements, which helped a lot when transferring credits to my new university. That decision was a turning point in my academic journey.

Western Governors University

I believe transferring to WGU (Western Governors University) was one of the best decisions I’ve made. The university’s flexible, online format meant I could complete the degree from anywhere, which is why I chose to move to Spain.

Moving to Spain was not easy, but things were starting to fall into place. My girlfriend’s mom offered to sponsor my visa, I secured an apartment, I was already fluent in Spanish, and I got into a degree program I was passionate about. Staying in Spain with my girlfriend was the cherry on top. With all these things lined up, moving to Spain was a no-brainer.

WGU’s structure gave me the freedom to go deep into areas I cared about, like AWS infrastructure, scripting, and DevOps. On top of that, the program included industry certifications at no extra cost, so I took full advantage and obtained them all:

• Amazon Web Services Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
• CompTIA Cloud+
• CompTIA Network+
• CompTIA A+
• CompTIA Security+
• Linux Essentials - Linux Professional Institute (LPI)

My brother and I graduated around the same time. He was finishing at Stanford and I had just completed my degree at WGU. It also happened to be our dad’s birthday. He never went to college himself, so having both his sons graduate on the same day made it one of the most meaningful moments our family’s ever had.

Career

Delaware North

Getting my start at Delaware North gave me the chance to put everything I’d learned into practice. I’ve worked across teams, tackled real infrastructure problems, and built things people actually use. It’s shown me that I don’t just enjoy working in the cloud — I’m good at it, and I want to keep getting better.

I’ve managed infrastructure across EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, and CloudWatch at scale. I’ve also led cost optimization work such as cutting waste by cleaning up unused resources, migrating data to lower-cost storage classes, rightsizing overprovisioned resources, jumping in when cost anomalies appear, and coordinating across teams to help them make sense of cloud spending. The cost savings I delivered opened the door for me to present directly to the CIO, where I walked through the work and helped shape some of our long term decisions around infrastructure. On the security side, I’ve enforced least privilege in IAM, locked down open security groups, removed unnecessary public access, ensured CloudTrail and Config are logging key activity, and used Guardrails to catch policy drift.

Every solution I build is secure by default, documented, automated where it makes sense, and optimized for cost and reliability from the start.

Travels

I will include some of my favorite photos of places that I have been to.