It all started back in 1991 on a warm midwestern day. Ok, I won’t go that far back, but I do want to share some of my professional highlights that got me to where I am today.

USAF

In 2009, the end of my high school journey was approaching. I felt the need to get away. Troubled by the loss of my sister and one of my two best friends, a fresh start is all I could think about. Without particularly good grades and limited funds, college didn’t seem feasible. As a Freshman I had joined an Air Force ROTC program so I could transfer to Oak Grove High School in San Jose. Naturally, I considered joining the military. It didn’t fit with my rebellious nature. After talking with a few of my family members who were previously airmen, it felt like the right step for me.

On October 1st, 2009, I moved to San Antonio Texas to begin Boot Camp. After 8.5 weeks I continued on for training to Biloxi Mississippi followed Wichita Falls Texas. I became an Integrated Avionics Technician and was assigned to work at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene Texas. It was not my dream location, but that was part of the uncertainty I had signed up for.

Abilene had its ups and downs. I fostered lifelong relationships, had technical challenges daily, and was immersed in a culture far different from my west-coast upbringing. I spent my free time playing guitar, exercising, and going anywhere I could. I frequently took weekend trips to Austin to enjoy live music and had many amazing adventures with one of my best friends in Dallas. Texas will always have a piece of my heart.

The climax of my military experience was in 2012 where I was selected to deploy to Qatar in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Our squadron was tasked to maintain a small fleet of B1-b aircraft that provided air support for troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. This challenged me in ways I couldn't have imagined. At the beginning of the deployment I volunteered to participate in a Fallen Warrior Ceremony. A soldier who had just died on the battlefield was flown in on a C-130. We briefly paid our respects and transferred him onto a new plane to fly back to the U.S. This became an unpleasant reminder that my actions and performance had direct impact to lives on the ground. If our aircraft weren’t in the sky during their scheduled intervals there was a high probability of casualties.

For the first several months we worked 14-16 hours every day. We had days as hot as 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Luckily our jets began cooperating and we started having a day off every week. I spent this time learning guitar. I would practice 10-12 hours a day. I even squeezed in time during breaks on workdays. By the time the deployment was over I could play half a dozen songs from start to finish and numerous intros. I bite off more than I could chew sometimes. I also had the opportunity to leave base and explore Doha. It was a treat to get doses of culture shock from shopping in the markets and soaking in eastern food and art. These trips provided relief from the steady grind of a deployment. Overall, Qatar was a period of hyper personal growth.

College, Internships, and Odd Jobs

San Diego to LA

After leaving the Air Force, I had a means to pay for college and a new fire inside to re-enter civilian society. Transitioning back into the regular world presented challenges. The military is a tough but steady life. You are told what to do, you work hard, and you receive your paycheck. Your interactions are harsh. The real world has much more uncertainty, while requiring a lot more delicacy and sensitivity. I had an adjustment period.

I moved to the beautiful city of San Diego. I began taking classes and soaking in all I could. It had been my dream to live on the beach. Pondering this vision got me through a lot of tough deployment days. My morning routine included running down to Pacific Beach and jogging on the sand. I had a lot of great times in San Diego and it is still one of my favorite places.

I ended up deciding to move to Los Angeles. I continued my studies at Santa Monica College in preperation to transfer to either UCLA or UC Berkeley. Shortly after arriving I applied for an internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. It was a childhood dream of mine to work for NASA. I ended up getting selected to work in Mission Operations as a systems engineer. I contributed to projects such as Mars 2020 Rover, Lunar Flashlight – a small satellite mission to the moon, and SPHEREx – a astrophysics space telescope concept.

Midway through the internship I received the news that I had been accepted to UC Berkeley and UCLA! I was ecstatic. I was going to move to Berkeley and enjoy the academic challenges ahead. But suddenly my urge to be somewhere new reappeared. At NASA, a lot of my mentors came from the University of Colorado in Boulder. They raved about it. I considered this as an option. I was accepted there as well and I knew their physics program was elite. After waking up from a vivid dream of the mountains, I had made my decision. A few weeks later I packed my things and headed to Colorado.

Colorado

Boulder proved to be every bit as weird and interesting as I had imagined. Tucked away at the foothills of the rockies, CU is a pleasant place to exercise your mind and body. I immediately felt the refreshing sense of the outdoors. In LA there was a lot of impedance to get to nature when now I could walk to a hike from campus.

I discovered CU had a great business development program called the New Venture Challenge. Students would pitch business concepts to panels of judges like in the show Shark Tank. The finals were held in the Boulder theatre. The winning team would receive $100,000 in funding. Me, attempting to be bold, took a shot. I had an idea for a social sharing app called “Pear” where home chefs would post a spot at the table for a home cooked meal. Users would then book a seat with them. Food version of Airbnb… I recruited a group of 10 students and young professionals to pursue this vision. For 6 months we fumbled around, creating marketing plans, hacking together prototypes, and frequently pitching the idea. For a couple reasons, one of them legal, I decided to shut it down. The team and I were grateful to have the experience. I hold Pear high on my personal growth list. It forced me out of a comfort zone that I have never re-entered.

Shortly after, I was strolling around the physics department when I stumbled across the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA). I walked around the corridors admiring the elegant research posted along the walls. I learned several Nobel Laureate physicists worked there on cutting edge atomic experiments. I found out they had an opening for an undergraduate researcher position. I applied, bugged who I needed to, and received an interview. My technical challenge was to design an accelerometer on the white board. Lucky for me these were key components in my Air Force job. I killed it. Tonya hired me on the spot.

For the next year I would design, engineer, and support our mission to uncover properties of electrons. I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Eric Cornell. He had previously won the Nobel Prize in physics in the 90’s by being the first researcher to produce a new phase of matter – the Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC). This state occurs when you super-cool atoms to just nanokelvins above absolute zero. The atoms enter this synchronous state, collapsing into a single wavefunction. Our experiments often used BEC as a starting point. I would go on to receive plenty of compliments and criticisms during my time at JILA. I was in an environment at the forefront of science, soaking in all the wisdom I could.

I had a series of personal unfortunate events and challenges that steered me away. The lab felt isolating. I wanted to be out in the world and away from school. I had burned out from the external stresses and constant academic workload. I remember thinking I hadn’t had any fun time or a social interaction that I enjoyed for 2 years. Anytime I found myself socializing I would panic, which was in stark contrast to previous years. I knew for my own mental health I needed to make changes.

I decided I was going to leave school for 1-2 years to do anything else. I had talked with a physics professor about my situation. He told me about his personal experience being a FedEx driver for a year to take a break from cramming electrodynamics. He said it was one of the smartest things he did. I had plenty of counter advice saying, “you are not going to go back” and “just get it done”. I stuck with my gut and set out to do anything else.

I met an eclectic set of people while driving for Lyft. The good, the bad, the ugly. But after about 500 rides or so I decided no more. I asked myself, where can I get the most social interactions possible? The idea of working at Starbucks for 6 months came to mind. I applied and started shortly after. I liked the idea of having a systematic approach to human interaction. As I went through the computer training, I tried my best to embrace it. One module required baristas to go into the bathroom and practice smiling. So there I was, in my green apron smiling at myself in the mirror. I had this strange feeling that this is way too unfamiliar. Ok, I’m not trying to portray a sob story - these were my actual thoughts. After thousands of lattes, smiles, and fun interactions with people, I was ready to move back to the Bay Area for the next chapter.

Pulse42.io

Back to the Bay

I got a call one day from Paul, a mentor of mine. He had an idea to create a platform for business executives in the tech industry. The concept was to provide insights into the software development lifecycle. When you are building a car, for example, the assembly lines and machines are well understood through streams of data. Managers can easily see the output of each step of the assembly line. Developing code for an application is similar, except for the fact that trying to understand the assembly line is like looking into the abyss. Pulse42 was born to solve this problem. I agreed to join and immediately started building a prototype.

India

Our team started to grow. We brought on several engineers dispersed around the US. Our CEO had a good relationship with a quality technical staffing company in India. We built a small team in Pune and another in Kolkata. Our development velocity increased but due to the 13.5 hour time zone difference and our immature communication processes at the time, we were inefficient. Occasionally engineers would get stuck and be blocked the whole day. They couldn’t get ahold of their manager who would be asleep in the U.S. I tried to stay up late to combat this but I began to wear out. Then I had a thought - what if I just move there for a while? That will remove a lot of the blockers and speed things up! I talked with the team. Everyone agreed it was a good idea. I bought my ticket to Mumbai and would call India my home for 2 months.

I found a cheap hotel buried in the middle of the city for $13 a night. I felt submerged in ancient chaos. Right outside my hotel was the usual motorcycles riding along the sidewalk, trying to avoid the men welding, and crafters selling their goods. Hundreds of local stray dogs were attempting to take food from merchants and decorated cows were roaming the streets. The crinkled cars were the minority on the road to the scooters and motor bikes. I found a local barbershop and received a $1 haircut. I was ready to work.

The contractors to hire and I had a small office inside the larger corporate building down the street from my hotel. I would walk over in the mornings. We would work on key backend components during the week. I managed to squeeze in some adventures on the weekends such as hiking to a 10,000-year-old castle! After 2 productive months and 1 near death sickness, I was ready to get back to the U.S.

Boulder

When arriving back to the U.S. the country went to lock down. Covid had spread its dark wings. My timing was lucky. Who knows how long I could have been stranded in India. After several more months of hacking away on the project, I felt I was ready to finish my degree. I had 3 semesters left. There was enough of a flicker at the end of the tunnel for me to want to push through. I bought an $800 Honda Civic, threw my things in the back, and headed east back to Boulder. My radiator blew in the middle of the Mojave dessert. I was able to do a replacement in an Autozone parking lot, but I had blown my head gasket. I did make it after several days and dozens of gallons of water. That's a story for another day.

I continued working on Pulse alongside school but the workload eventually became overwhelming. I took some time off and completed my degree. I used my wave of energy from my accomplishment to help the team release an important version of our product. It was a milestone we were aiming at for a long time. After this point, I felt a great sense of achievement. We weren’t this billion-dollar company with hundreds of happy customers, but we had taken a Powerpoint, the modern napkin, and turned it into a tangible application. The road was a long one with a never-ending stream of problems, but we had reached a notable checkpoint.

I felt this wave of relief. The mission was far from over, but my guilt was subsiding. I had a growing desire to consider new career opportunities. These feelings now felt justified. In February 2022, I stepped away from Pulse42. The team was understanding and supportive of my decision. The rollercoaster ride was a rewarding experience filled with amazing and talented people. Each one of them brought their own cultural light to the company which was an honor to be a part of.

As for now, onwards and upwards.