I am a father, husband, and son who's spent my career as a software engineer. I couldn't be prouder of my kids, my family, the teams I've led, the teams I've learned from, and the systems I've architected, implemented, and supported. But I'm most proud of the positive effect I've had on those I've had the privilege to influence through relationships born from family, friendships, or work - and seeing their work influence others in turn. The lasting effects of a person's work is where my immortality comes from.
I invest in people. I take pride in what I build. And I care deeply about finding clarity on what matters enough to hold firm on, then holding that line.
Software engineering drew me in because it combines technical precision with social collaboration - and a kind of philosophical inquiry that is necessary when finding clarity on what the true requirements are or what the best technical abstractions might be. Leadership became the natural extension because helping others grow multiplies my contribution, and that growth keeps compounding through everyone it touches. I can write good code, but I can have more compounding impact by helping ten engineers write good code, helping them collaborate more effectively, and helping them develop the people around them in turn.
I believe the best leaders make themselves unnecessary. When teams are thriving, they should feel ownership of their success - not gratitude toward the person who directed them. My job is to create conditions where good things happen, not to be the hero. I'm suspicious of leaders who need to be central to every decision, who take credit for wins and deflect blame for losses. That's not leadership; it's theater.
I also believe you can't develop people in a craft you've abandoned. Technical credibility matters. Leaders who lose it become dependent on translators, and that dependency creates blind spots. So I remain a practitioner - not to prove anything, but because I can't guide people through terrain I no longer walk myself.
I'm a father of five in a blended family spanning three households. It's one of the most challenging and growth-producing experiences of my life - demanding capabilities I didn't know I needed and exposing limitations I didn't know I had.
Parenting in this context has taught me things no job ever could. Influence without authority is a skill, and sometimes the only tool you have. Consistency matters more than intensity - showing up reliably beats grand gestures. Repair matters more than perfection; you will make mistakes, and what matters is the aftermath. Patience is required with so many familial stakeholders, but decisive action is also required or no decisions will be made. These experiences mirror professional work, but are different enough that different muscles get exercised. What develops in one context creates capacity that shows up unexpectedly in the other.
Finding complementary relationships between seemingly different domains energizes me. Family and leadership is one example. Technical architecture and organizational structure is another (Conway's Law). Single Points of Failure cripple systems; knowledge silos cripple teams. Or the moment when abstract mathematics suddenly illuminates why a piece of code works the way it does. Related cross-domain patterns aren't always obvious, but once you see them, they show up everywhere. Learning them, seeing them, and leveraging the knowledge and skills acquired in one domain within a separate domain is pure gold.
I've learned to hold a few things tightly and most things loosely. Integrity, I hold tightly - doing what's right even when it costs something, communicating honestly even when it's uncomfortable. Developing people, I hold tightly - it's not something I do when there's time left over; it's the work. Quality, I hold tightly - not perfection, but the kind of work I'd put my name on.
Most everything else, I hold loosely. Processes, tools, architectural patterns, org structures - these are means, not ends. I've been right enough to have developed opinions about what works. But I've been wrong often enough to know that strong opinions should be held provisionally. The goal is to be right at the end, not to have been right at the beginning.
My career has wound through defense contracting, media & entertainment, and broad enterprise software. The thread connecting them isn't industry - it's the pattern of building something from ambiguity, growing a team around it, and then ensuring I'm not a SPoF by developing a team that's more resilient and capable together than any of us could be alone.
I've worked on countless software systems and tech stacks over my career. I've worked with countless engineers and teams over that timespan as well. I still have not been invited to the wedding of an old website I did a masterful refactoring to. But I still have relationships with people I've grown alongside, and engineers I've helped develop over the years. People are worth investing in.
If any of this resonates, I'd enjoy connecting. Find me on GitHub or LinkedIn.