About me
I'm an outdoor-focused tech enthusiast with a passion for the sciences and education. I currently live nomadically by choice to maximize job and education opportunities through mobility. I care deeply about skydiving, photography, backpacking, and backcountry skiing, and I share those interests through visual media whenever I can. I've lived in five states and two countries, traveled the width of the contiguous United States and seven countries, and driven the Alaska Highway multiple times. I believe opportunities are only as good as the places we allow ourselves to look, and I want a career where I can build useful tools, support research, and help people make sense of logistics and data.
Background
After a high school career competing at national levels in music with the West Salem High School bands, I entered IT work. That early move established a lasting pull toward technology. Shortly after, I joined the United States Air Force, where I worked on radios, served on Honor Guard, and performed structured troubleshooting of networked radios and their systems, high-security maintenance, and satellite communications.
It was on active duty that I discovered skydiving. As my military career ended, I transitioned into work as a certificated skydiving rigger and completed my first A.A.S. in Web Design and Digital Multimedia from Skagit Valley College in Washington. With that degree and intensive networking, I landed my first role as a junior full-stack software engineer—learning aggressively on the job. That position lasted about a year and a half until the company went bankrupt. I returned to skydiving and taught snowboarding in winter while deciding what to study next. I found a deep love for the mountains and pursued a second A.A.S. in outdoor leadership in Valdez, Alaska. In that program I discovered GIS and began exploring how to combine the outdoors with technology for a career that feels both fulfilling and grounded.
Current efforts and projects
I am working toward a Bachelor's degree in Geomatics with a focus on GIS. I chose this path after starting to build an avalanche forecasting browser tool—mostly out of love for Thompson Pass and a wish to consolidate background information in one place. That project is still at the center of my motivation. Along the way I have leaned into ArcGIS and QGIS, found ongoing research in snow modeling, and studied terrain workflows used to judge avalanche exposure and terrain complexity. I am interested in weather-aware route systems that combine those ideas to suggest least-cost paths from trailhead to objective as safely as possible, with reliable, decision-ready information.
Career goals and trajectory
I am targeting GIS developer roles where I can automate spatial workflows and return clear, concise, usable information. I see that work as a stepping stone toward a master's in geospatial engineering and eventually a Ph.D. that lets me collaborate with environmental, climate, and meteorological scientists—building tools that support their research.