I started out life with very little direction on who I wanted to be. I had very shallow goals with little substance. I was mostly just moving through life like a drifter moving from one thing to another. The only major goal I had was to “Join the Air Force” with little thought on what I wanted to do in the Air Force. I met my amazing wife Katie my freshman year of Highschool and instantly fell in love. Still with little direction on who I wanted to be, this amazing and patient person that I had in my life is the largest contributor to who I am today. I wouldn’t be alive were it not for her. She has stuck with me through thick and thin and is the person who gave me my two wonderful children Atlas & Orion. My family is my #1 driving force in my life.

I am and have always been a resilient person. Whether it’s taking a beating on the flight line after my 14th hour at work, or constantly throwing myself against an enemy in a video game, I have never been someone to back away from a challenge. I joined the Air Force at the ripe age of 18 2 weeks after getting married. I was a scrawny 6’ 120lb kid who couldn’t do a single pushup. So I had to work extremely hard to whip myself into shape in order to succeed in basic training. After that I was informed that my long-awaited job was a “Crew Chief” for the C-130. As someone who had never touched a tool in his life and 0 mechanical inclination this was going to be another struggle. I thrived and had a blast in my technical training following basic and made some lifelong memories. Katie and I soon moved to Ramstein Germany to officially start our lives together. From long days to grueling physical work and having to push myself at least twice as hard as my peers who all seemed to just understand mechanics much faster than I, being a crew chief was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life. I went from someone who was just showing up because that’s what I felt like I was supposed to do, to a thriving and experienced maintainer. Being able to physically touch and see the impact that I was having was honestly amazing and it was possibly the best 5 years of my life.

Being a Crew Chief was not all good though. Those long days and physical work and take a major toll not only on me but also on my family. That’s why I decided that I needed a change. My time came up to be able to retrain and I took it. Computers had always fascinated me and largely because of my love for video games I felt that a career in cyber was right for me. Once again, I was going into it with little to no prior knowledge on what I was doing. But after training and arriving at Langley Virginia I was thriving better than ever. Because of the always learning mentality that being a maintainer ingrained in me, I showed up at Langley ready to learn. I was bothering senior technicians constantly trying to learn everything I could. I soon soared past my peers becoming one of the dependable operators available. I was soon moved into advanced position after advanced position available in my squadron. I quickly ended up in what was considered the pinnacle position for an operator, Weapons and Tactics. It was here that I discovered a new passion. After working with some Defensive Cyber Operators, I knew that is what I wanted to be. I have since been working towards gaining as much knowledge about cybersecurity that I can. The entire field is unexplainably fascinating, and I can never learn enough. I cannot wait to see what I can learn next.

I now go through life constantly trying to “Live Laugh Love”. What started as a silly saying to try and ingrain myself into people’s minds, turned into something that I genuinely try to live by. Live your life the best way that you can. This is different for everyone but once you intentionally start to “Live” is when you start to realize what that means to you. Laughter is extremely important to me. Making people laugh is easily my favorite pass time. I always try and make sure that I laugh at least once a day and try and make sure the people around me also laugh at least once a day. And finally, Love. To truly get through life we must find something to love because that is what we work for. For me that is my family and my passions. For others it can be as simple as their home or their computer. Finding what you love is going to drive you to constantly improve yourself. I hope to be the type of mentor that can ingrain these ideals and grow others around me. So please come “Live Laugh Love” with me so we can truly see who we can become.