Early Years

After graduating from Bowdoin College with a degree in Economics, I sought opportunities to learn all I could about finance. Fresh out of school I spent a year at one of the most risk-averse employers in the US, a F500 insurance company called Unum Group. After about a year of 9-5 stability, I longed for a faster-paced environment that would challenge me.

Shortly into my search, an opportunity came up to take an 80% pay cut and begin life anew as an entry level investment analyst at a top-tier VC firm in Shanghai. I signed right away, moved to China a month later and settled in for a new adventure overseas.

Life in the Startup World

In this new role at SOSV, a global leader in startup accelerator programs, I was thrown in the fire to learn faster than ever before. While representing one of the world's leading early stage investment firms, I was able to connect with, learn from, coach and fund top tier mobile internet software startups from around the globe looking to expand their business into China

After ~18 months at SOSV, traveling around Asia and completing ~25 venture deals with promising startups, I found myself itching to join one. Opportunity came knocking once again in December, 2016, when a close friend found a role at a budding fintech startup called eShares based in San Francisco. This role would give me an opportunity to learn how to value a company and study how successful businesses plan for growth. I couldn't have known at the time that this budding startup would one day become a multi-billion dollar unicorn, currently known as Carta.

GROWING THROUGH A PANDEMIC

After a few years at Carta, I decided to try and bring some balance to my life and move back closer to family on the East coast. Ultimately this move meant leaving Carta. With my equity gains in hand I decided to explore real estate investing, got my real estate license, and started to learn the ropes just as COVID-19 decided to turn the world on its head.

Surrounding myself with entrepreneurs and engineers for years fed an interest to try and make the leap into software myself. With the time I'd been given to step back and reflect on which direction I wanted to head to next, I decided to start teaching myself basics of software development. I found I absorbed materials quickly, and felt the thrill of solving a new challenging problem again, but found my learning process scattered not knowing which resources to best lean on as I learned. After reviewing the top training programs in the country, I decided to join App Academy's fullstack software engineering program.

Recent Projects

The six months I spent at App Academy ended up yielding some of the best learning experiences of my career. By learning two full end-to-end stacks (JavaScript & Python) I was able to cement fundamentals from one language while learning another. Having repeated the same core concepts applied to two different tech stacks with completely different syntaxes, I feel far more prepared to learn a 3rd, 4th and whatever else will be required of on me in my next developer role.

As a brief showcase of these skill sets, below are a few projects that were put together in 1-2 weeks while at App Academy. Please check them out! Most of these have an option to log in as a Demo User to explore the full functionality, but given that they're hosted on Heroku for free, it may take a minute or two for the dyno's to wake up. Feedback on ways to improve is always welcome!

robinhunt

Robinhunt

Solo | 2 Weeks | React/Flask | May '21

Robinhunt is a clone of the popular Robinhood trading app that focuses on providing a commission-free stock trading platform to its users.

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relay

relay

Group | 1 Week | React/Flask | May '21

Relay is a clone of Asana that focuses on helping teams manage projects and task delegation across team members.

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ebrite

e.brite

Solo | 1 Week | React/Express | Apr '21

e.brite is a clone of Eventbrite that connects people through virtual, online events. Users come to the site to find free and paid virtual events including concerts, online gaming or networking activities.

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goodgames

goodgames

Group | 1 Week | Pug/Express | Mar '21

GoodGames is a clone of GoodReads that focuses on surfacing the most popular video games to play. Users add to the community by adding reviews for games they've played.

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