About Me

If you want the nicely formatted version of this, check out my About Me page. But if you’re here for the blog version, settle in. This is the story of me.

My Childhood

I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My dad is one of thirteen siblings, so from day one I was surrounded by a big, loud, loving family. For the longest time, I thought it was perfectly normal to have a gathering of 50 to 60 people every Sunday after church. Turns out, not everyone’s family fills an entire hall for a casual weekend get-together. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, though. That sense of community shaped a lot of who I am.

My Faith

Speaking of church, I am a practicing Catholic, and it is an integral part of my identity. As I’m typing this right now, I’m listening to Gregorian chants from an artist called “Catholic Lofi.” I also sing in the choir at my parish and get together frequently with others from our community. Faith has always been the foundation that everything else in my life is built on, and I’m grateful for the peace and purpose it brings.

Growing Up

In grade school, I was very active in my community. High school in particular was a whirlwind. Here’s a snapshot of what I was involved in:

Bots IQ - I competed in robotics competitions, which was my first real taste of engineering and teamwork under pressure.

Track and Field - I made it to WPIALs (regional championships) in outdoor track and competed at states for indoor. Those early mornings and late practices taught me a lot about discipline.

Theater - I was in several musicals. In Aladdin, I played Jafar. In Mary Poppins, I was Von Hussler. Being on stage was a totally different kind of challenge, and I loved every second of it.

Marching Band - I was the lead percussionist playing the tenor drums (affectionately referred to as the “Quads”) both my junior and senior year. Having the same person lead quads for two consecutive years is actually pretty uncommon, and it’s something I’m still proud of.

Boy Scouts - I went camping frequently and served as Senior Patrol Leader, the highest-ranking position a youth can hold. I completed my Eagle Scout project by transforming a wooded area behind my church into a community hangout spot. That involved tearing down multiple sheds and installing a fire ring.

Honor Society - This was only awarded to students who, between their junior and senior year, completed at least five AP courses, with all remaining courses being honors level.

Teaching - I taught a beginner Python course to middle schoolers after school. Seeing kids light up when their code actually ran was incredibly rewarding.

Mentoring - I was hand-selected from my classmates to meet weekly with a middle school student who was going through a tough time, whether that was family life, mental health, or something else entirely. It was humbling and meaningful work.

Things I Had to Drop - I was also on the soccer team, in show choir, and part of jazz band, but unfortunately I had to let those go. There are only so many hours in a day.

College

I went to Penn State main campus all four years, and had a great time. I stayed heavily involved in activities, although this is where I really started finding my personal niche.

I was a part of PSOC (Penn State Outdoor Club), where we would occasionally go on weekend and week-long backpacking trips. I was also a member of DCF (Disciple Makers Christian Fellowship), where I met many lifelong friends and roommates. I participated in numerous data fests and hackathons, with my highest achievement being winning “Best External Use of Data” and “Best Overall” my junior year.

I also found my love for autonomous vehicles in the Penn State AV Club. Over the course of two years, we actually built a functioning self-driving car. We traveled to Ann Arbor multiple times for testing and competing against other colleges.

I served as an RA (Resident Assistant), where I was able to give new students a warm welcome to college life while also learning how to lay down the law and keep 40+ college freshmen out of trouble.

This is also where my passion for disc golf started. There were many courses nearby, some of the best on the East Coast. My biggest regret of college was probably not trying out for the Blue Band, Penn State’s marching band. They’re known to be one of the best in the entire country. I didn’t realize how much I loved playing the tenor drums until I left my high school marching band behind.

Life After College

I married my wonderful, genuine, thoughtful, funny wife four months after graduating. We knew each other from high school and started dating shortly after we graduated. As of May 2026, we have two cats named Ducky and Goose (Duck Duck Goose reference?) and a red fox lab named Eevee (of course it’s a Pokemon reference). We purchased a house in the Pittsburgh suburban area and are looking forward to hopefully expanding our family soon, God willing.

Professionally, I work at Ford Motor Company. I’ve technically been with Ford since 2021, my sophomore year of college, when I completed my first internship. I went back for a second internship the following year and got hired after graduating. I’ve been working as a data engineer ever since. Some highlights of my work include building cloud-scale data warehousing on GCP and BigQuery, data modeling with dbt Core, pipeline orchestration with Astronomer Airflow, and agentic AI solutions using Anthropic Claude and Vertex AI.

One of my proudest contributions has been helping build an agentic AI product that saved Ford an estimated $68M+ in just its first two months. I also personally drove $5M+ in cost savings through AI-powered automation in a single month. It’s been a wild ride.

Current Day

I’m currently continuing my hobbies and happily enjoying all that life has to offer. One new side project I’ve been playing with is Openclaw and locally running LLMs on my Galaxy Book 4 Ultra (32GB RAM, RTX 4070). I actually built the bare bones of this website with it, and I can see a future where locally hosted agentic workflows become the norm for computer enthusiasts.

Another exciting development is the release of Pokemon Champions, which significantly lowered the barrier to entry for competitive Pokemon. I had always been a fan, but this game made it so much more accessible to start creating teams and entering tournaments. It’s been a blast diving deeper into the VGC scene because of it.

If you’ve enjoyed my ramblings here, check out the About Me page for the full experience with my favorites grid and all that good stuff.