About Me

Personal Life

Child of the Pacific Northwest, Grants Pass (Oregon) has been home for the last four years. Nestled in picturesque hillslopes, isolated and surrounded by miles of state and national forest, Grants Pass is a city in the wilderness, a haven for campers and hunters and river rats. Kayaking down the Rogue River with my wife, or my three children, are some of my happiest memories of the summer seasons here.

With a son and two daughters, family has made my life richer, and fuller, especially compared to dinners for one. My wife Shaw is a constant support and blessing, and I could not accomplish what I do without her. I am grateful to the four of them, and my parents and friends, for their patience and support towards my creative efforts over the years.

Music, dancing and theater are enduring passions of mine. Most recently I have been cast as Vlad in the local community theater production of Anastasia. I was ten at my first community theater production in Forest Grove (OR), and the years in between include fencing in a national tournament, competing in ballroom dance tournaments in Las Vegas, and doing a comic strip tease for The Full Monty in Corvallis (OR) -- I didn't make the final four.

My wife and I love to donate our time at MINT, often the only low-barrier warming and cooling shelter option for the homeless in our city. I also serve on their finance committee.

Professional Cred

Computer programming is my strongest professional interest. With seven years experience in Rust, I have a solid grasp of the language fundamentals, and can apply algorithmic and architectural principles in idiomatic language, leaning on solid third-party crates to leverage the existing ecosystem for maximum efficiency. Although I have used code in a professional context for over 5 years, I have struggled to communicate and share my work with others, and to sufficiently engage. Consequently, I have some libraries that I think other people would be excited to see, and I have resolved to start writing about them.

My work is in government doing GIS (Geographic Information Systems, a.k.a. mapping). This is a different field than programming, with orthogonal skill sets and knowledge bases. I have always found maps an exciting way to present information, and often an informative way to digest key details. Compared to tables and charts, maps paint a picture instead of presenting a spreadsheet. Because I know the industry requirements so well, I focus on developing tools for GIS hoping my professional experience will provide me with a competitive advantage.

Academic Pedigree

In 2020 I earned a doctorate in Environmental Sciences from Oregon State University. I had the privilege of studying with Dr. Stephen Lancaster, a preeminent scholar of rivers and streams, the science of fluvial geomorphology. My research showed that the amount of sediment swept downstream in the mountainous headwater streams of our Oregon wilderness was sufficient to account for the vast amounts of debris swept into the valley from landslides coming off the hills. I built a sediment budget and the books balanced. We constructed the record from hundreds of radiocarbon samples of charcoal trapped in stream deposits, a novel method at the time.

Since joining the Boy Scouts and earning my Eagle rank, I have firmly believed in the value of civic service. By 2013 I was ready to express my commitment to civil service by earning a Masters in Public Administration. The UW Evans School of Public Policy and Governance is one of the finest MPA programs in the country, ranked 2nd among public schools at the time of my graduation. I had the honor of working with Dr. Richard Zerbe, the father of benefit-cost analysis, in the eleventh hour before his retirement.

My Bachelors is in classical music composition, from USC in 2001, where I studied with Dr. Erica Muhl, the last protege of Nadia Boulanger. Music has broadened my horizons and deepened my appreciation for life, but it has not buttered my bread. I can't blame music, either, the fault is mine. Or maybe I will write the great American musical at long last???

Want to see details? Here is a link to my CV.