This week I joined the Volano Solutions Team. My goal is to ruthlessly climb to the top and achieve world domination, one client engagement at a time. So you should know a little bit about me.

I was born and raised here in Omaha and got my first taste of computer programming in high school. My freshman year I joined the high school chess club. The teacher that headed the chess club turned out to be the computer programming instructor so the following year I enrolled in his class and started writing QBASIC. By the end of high school, I had exposure to Visual Basic and C++ as well and I also caught the software bug.

Fast forward to college or at least round one of college. After graduating I enrolled at Iowa State University majoring in Computer Science. After two years of Computer Science curriculum, I decided I was going to go to Medical School and changed my major to Biology. During my time as a biology major I became a certified nursing assistant and began working at the local hospital in the oncology unit. Despite my best efforts to excel in my new major, I did not have the same passion for Biology that had for Computer Science and ended up leaving Iowa State and moving back to Omaha after three years.

After returning to Omaha, I spent the next few years working various jobs including house painter, pizza delivery guy, and various other odd jobs including waiting tables. After a few years at the same restaurant I decided it was time to give school another try.

I enrolled at University of Nebraska at Omaha once again studying computer science. I was astonished at how fast I picked up programming after so many years away. Over the next three years I went to class during the day and worked at the restaurant in the evenings. I started studying at night and would often be up until five or six in the morning working on projects. My final year of school I got the opportunity to work for UNO as a tutor. After graduation I took a job doing web development for a local actuarial consulting firm getting my chops and am excited about the next phase of my young career at Volano.