My Journey
Coming from a deeply-rooted medical background in my family, after I graduated high school I left for college with two goals in mind: a long college baseball career and a degree in Biology to set me up for medicial school (or professional baseball).
One semester, one knee surgery, and one failed biology class later... I was back at home wondering what was next.
I picked up a part-time role at an optometry office, enrolled in some general studies courses, and started racking my brain over what my next step was. Maybe it was nursing. Maybe PA school. Maybe I could put my head down and give the Biology degree one more try. Then I started to wonder - what if there was another way to pursue my passion for the medical field, without the scrubs or the MCAT?
January 1st, 2022: That's when I took the deep dive into web development. Between YouTube videos, online communities (if you need one, I couldn't recommend 100devs or Dallas Software Developers more), and personal projects I was piecing together what it meant to build a website.
TypeScript, Python, CSS, accessibility standards, OOP—little by little I gained more confidence in my abilities to design and develop websites from scratch. After six months of late nights and countless cups of coffee, I landed my first full-time role. This is where I started to fully see how important the intersection between medicine and technology truly was.
In that first role, I was introduced to a whole new mindset around development: patient aquisition, practice branding, HIPPA standards. I started to see technology and the web as a foundation for fostering better, easier, and faster treatment for patients who need it most.
Shortly after, I started my journey towards a degree that aligned with both my experience and long-term goals: Cybersecurity. Learning how the web works on a deeper level—and how to build secure, resilient applications—all essential pieces within healthtech.
From starting at a heavily design and UX/UI-focused role, to working in backend workflows and streamlining pipelines for more efficient applications, to building a solid educational foundation in web architecture, networking, and security—I began to develop a new mindset: seeing apps holisitcally. Seeing a problem and being able to look through it. Sometime a design revamp for one component could turn up deeper issues and inefficiencies across the entire application—using this holistic approach leads to important improvements, like delivering critical data to patients faster.
As time went on, I became more engrained in the healthtech space: learning how patient data travels, seeing the constant cyberwar raged against hospitals, and uncovering so many topics that I spend time researching and breaking down. All of it to push the envelop when it comes to improving healthcare, one line of code at a time.
What Else?
Well, what about outside of my work?
Well, on November 20, 2024 I married the love of my life (yes... she is the same girl from my high school graduation picture).
I still thoroughly enjoy all kinds of sports: you can find my on the golf course or watching baseball, football, basketball, tennis, and much more on tv.
As a developer, I have an obligation to be pretty nerdy as well: I enjoy playing video games, find a lot of inspiration in movies and tv shows, and love collecting a lot of desk trinkets (and Pokemon cards).
I've been heavily involved in my home church since my senior year of high school, so my Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights are usually booked.