About me

I have been working in the software industry for over 20 years. Prior to that, I spent a decade in the building industry.

I am an American citizen by birth, but grew up in eastern Canada from the age of 1 years old. In 2003, I moved to New Zealand with my wife who was a Kiwi.

What motivates me?

Throughout my life, I have always been curious. I love to learn, and I derive great satisfaction from understanding how something works. As a child, I would often take my toys apart to see what made them tick. This led my to my current career in software, as I wanted to learn how computers work.

I am creative. When I was in high school, I intended to pursue a career in graphic design. But due to financial difficulties, I was not able to attend university. This is the reason I gravitated towards front end early in my career - it was a marriage of art and technology.

I also spiritual. This places in me a desire for social justice and positive change. This motivates me to empower and lift up others.

My Journey

I am a full-stack software engineer who has had an interesting career, and a non-traditional path to how I got here.

I came into software development quite late. I was in my late 20's, living in Canada, when I began learning the craft. I had been using my flatmate's PC & learning some Visual Basic.

From there, I purchased my own PC & took a 2 year course at a local business school. Due to external circumstances, this ended up taking 3 years after needing to take a year off.

Once I finished my course, I left Canada to be with my fiancé who had returned to New Zealand a few months earlier.

Without a university degree, I found it difficult to land engineering roles when starting out. My first role, which lasted 9 months, had me working on an ASP/VB6 site for a local contractor. During this time, I found my satisfaction with the UI of the site greater than the business logic on the backend.

From there, I began specializing in Frontend. In the early days, this was 95% HTML, 5% CSS, and a sprinkling of Javascript here and there. But as the browsers matured, I began to add interactivity to the frontend sites I worked on.

This started with Flash, which was very popular at the time. This technology allowed us to add engaging and appealing interactive content. I became a subject matter expert in ActionScript, with many successful projects.

But with the release of the iPhone, the viability of Flash was severely reduced. From here, I began applying my learnings from Flash/Actionscript ino HTML and Javascript. Over the next few years, I learned how the Javascript engine worked internally, allowing me to have better tools to solve the challenges presented me.

I was hired by a company to oversee a rewrite of the web interface of their flagship product. This work took approximately 18 months to complete. With little frontend work needed, I transitioned into a full stack developer, writing backend code in Java and C++.

On my next job, I was again hired as a frontend developer. However, this company used C# on the backend. Over time, I transitioned again to fullstack.

Also, throughout my career, I have been asked to step into leadership roles. I strive to make continuous improvements, both in my self and in my team.

My other interests

My wife and I are raising our twin grand daughters. I am honored and humbled by the opportunity to help these wonderful girls become the great women they will one day become.

I am an active volunteer in my community. My biggest project at this time is teaching woodworking to at-risk youth. I find this a rewarding opportunity to provide these children with a sense of accomplishment and positive male role models.

I am also a musician. I have been playing guitar since I was 16, and bass since the age of 25.

With my background in music and carpentry/woodworking, I have also begun to build custom guitars from scratch. I find this is another avenue to combine my creative and engineering interests.

Where do I want to go?

I would like my career to continue in leadership. I love working with people, and I love helping others to succeed in their goals.

I will also be improving my luthery skills, with the goal of being able to build 4 to 6 custom guitar/basses per year.

I am also constantly on the lookout for ways I can give back to my community.