About Me

My journey into tech started in a high school web development class, back when CSS media queries and Twitter Bootstrap were all the rage. (feels like ancient history now). My first "big break" came when a classmate and I won first place in a website competition by creating a community calendar. Sure, it was just a styled Google Calendar embedded on an html page with some photos, but hey – at least it was profitable since we won a cash prize.

In college, I took the plunge into CS 142 (Introduction to Computer Programming) during my second year, despite worrying about what repercussions it might have on my social status. While wrestling with C++ and its infamous segmentation faults, I discovered something important: I loved how programming felt like a superpower. Suddenly I could automate tedious tasks and tap into API’s to do things “normal” people can’t do. I also liked the challenge it presented.

However, I started questioning my life decisions when I found myself in discrete mathematics writing mathematical proofs. Eventually I landed in information systems major; I felt the information there was a bit more pragmatic and versatile.

I graduated with vague aspirations of becoming a penetration tester. My first post-college job had me doing vulnerability management, web testing, and code reviews. But I had an epiphany: while security was interesting, I want to use my creativity to solve problems, rather than using it to find them (and then trying to persuade people to fix them). In other words, I want to be the builder rather than the building inspector.