Around 1999 or so, my brother brought home a computer for me. Looking back, I’m fairly certain he picked it up at a garage sale for next to nothing. It was an Apple IIe, with a whopping 1MHZ processor. When you turned it on, you were dropped into a terminal. If you knew how to write Applesoft BASIC, you could type programs in one line at a time.

This was my introduction to programming, and I was hooked.

Not too long after the Apple IIe, I had my own computer with Window ME. I stumbled on the fact that the Microsoft Word actually had an entire IDE built-in for Visual Basic, and I was hooked. (Years later, I’d learn that it was actually VBA.) It was my first taste of WYSIWYG, and the 10ish-year old me was blown away by how easy it was to drag-n-drop GUIs together.

I started trying to build games, learning what I could from the early internet (RIP planet-source-code.com!), and making the rest up as I went. I’d like to tell you I was a prodigy and wrote a Doom clone or something, but let’s be real; I was programming in MS Word. Since then, though, I’d like to think I’ve come a long way in my journey.

Since I’ve started programming, I’ve loved exploring new ways to make games and experiences interesting to interact with. I’ve spent countless weekends poking at code that I’d be able to use in the future, working on everything from writing nginx server configs to shader-based graphics programming. My hard drive is full of experiments, toys, and side projects which I’ve used to learn something new. Each endeavor prepares me with a new tool or technique, and it’s actually rare for me to not apply something I’ve recently learned. Learning is what keeps me going.

After some twists and turns in life, I ended up graduating out of RIT’s New Media Design program in 2013 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. I had spent my time in school learning a lot about how to think like a UX designer; classes involved everything from sketching portraiture, to 3D modelling, to animating motion graphics in After Effects. A big takeaway for me was learning to look at programs/apps/games as experiences, not just working software. I’ve been able to apply a lot of my design school training to my programming work as well, which has been great; having the ability to hop the fence between design and development allows me a lot of flexibility when creating solutions or while implementing new features.

While my career has mostly meandered through webland, I’ve always been interested in pursuing game development. It’s one of the few things for me that gets me into that zone where long stretches of time seem to pass instantly, and continues to kick around in my head when I’m not coding. I currently am able to fulfill this dream by working at Meta on Horizon Worlds, a VR-first social multiplayer platform.

I currently reside in Longmont, Colorado, with my wife, whom I married in August 2022. Together, we love to travel, attend concerts, and are proud supporters of the Purple Parrots (from Legends of the Hidden Temple, yes!). We share our home with our two dogs, Marley and Ollie, which we love to take for hikes in the Rocky Mountains. My interests include wildlife conservation and guerilla gardening, while my hobbies include skateboarding, powerlifting, and solving “escape room” games with my wife.