My Story

Growing Up

My earliest years were spent in New Orleans where I grew up until about the age of 12. My mother then moved to Austin, Texas, so I spent my teenage years between family in Austin and family in New Orleans. As a teenager growing up between two cities, I was forging a strong work ethic and held some pretty amazing jobs.

My first job was at a chain restaurant in Texas called Luby's where I established strong interpersonal skills with customers. My second job was at Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo on Bourbon Street, a staple of New Orleans tourism. At Marie Laveau's, I was able to further strengthen my interpersonal skills and established strong conflict resolution and problem-solving skills.

Military

Despite loving both jobs at Luby's and Marie Laveau's, I had plans of becoming an airborne soldier ever since doing a grade-school project on army paratroopers and being fascinated with the idea of such a challenge. So, at the age of 17, I joined the U.S. Army National Guard in Texas, attended basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and served for two years in the 111th Area Support Group in Austin, Texas with annual training in Kaiserslautern, Germany. After the years in the Texas National Guard, I reenlisted in the regular U.S. Army, went through airborne school, and was stationed on Fort Drum, New York with the 10th Mountain Division.

After spending another four years in the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain, I reenlisted again (3 total enlistments) but shortly thereafter it was discovered that several soldiers in my unit had developed tumors. Unfortunately, I was one of them. I had developed several small tumors in my bladder that the Army stated was "due to exposure." Luckily, I was young, extremely healthy otherwise and in great shape, so I was able to beat it more easily than some other people. Because of this, however, the Army put me in their TDRL program for the next five years while I kicked the tumors and made sure they were gone for good. At the end of the five year TDRL, I was medically retired with an honorable discharge.

Civilian Life and School

After leaving the Army, I was getting a lot of checkups to make sure the tumors didn't come back, so I took the role of a stay-at-home-dad, raising my two kids and going to university at night. I graduated cum laude from Central Connecticut State University with a B.A. in Economics and Anthropology (double major) in December 2018. At the same time that I was going to school, in addition to a few Computer Science classes, I was teaching myself how to program, learning first with C and then moving on to Swift and Python.

In the fall of 2018, in my last semester of school, I took an internship at The Institute for Community Research (ICR) and that internship quickly turned into a job offer. After 15 months total at ICR, I left at the end of December 2019 to help care for my brother in Austin, Texas as he was suffering from severe complications from a horrible vehicle collision.

My brother ultimately passed away, and I moved back up to Connecticut shortly thereafter (in the middle of the pandemic) where I worked on projects for local businesses (mainly MGM Electric, Inc). Therefor I have gaps in my employment history, but the gaps aren't due to being idle, as I was taking online courses, strengthening my programming skills, self-investing and volunteering where I could.