As an undergraduate studying history and philosophy, I was inspired by the struggles and triumphs of humankind. Studying environmental ethics impressed upon me the severity of the environmental degradation and suffering happening in the world. I realized how far humanity has come and how far it still needs to go. I became dedicated to making a positive difference any way I could.

After graduating in 2010, I enrolled in a masters in political science to study environmental policy. I quickly realized in order to understand the complex problems facing the world, I needed to pursue interdisciplinary research. This led me to leave the program and begin a period of intensive self-directed learning and further education in the STEM fields. That singular pursuit eventually led me to software development and to become a technical contributor to impact-driven organizations across multiple domains.

Today, I am a senior software engineer at Square, Inc, where we are building tools to empower people to participate and thrive in the economy. I am also a co-founder of the Sustainable Progress and Equality Collective (SPEC), which is an open learning organization that empowers individuals to be catalysts for positive change.

Highlights

• Lead development of a mobile application portal for a virtual agronomy platform. Managed the project from requirements gathering to deployment and maintenance.
• Raised over $300,000 to develop open-source projects that support social impact and create career training and development opportunities.
• Integrated digital course material service provider with a leading enterprise student information system to automate manual reconciliation processes for university accounts receivable departments.
• Prototyped a cross platform desktop app for tracking user activity for academic research and digital inclusion impact studies.
• Developed an automated call-center service for a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company's product release. Delivered solution two months ahead of schedule and $15K under budget.
• Guest lecturer on environmental physics and sustainable technologies at the State University of New York at Albany.
• Panelist at the "Taking Care of Ourselves" event held at Saint Bonaventure University.