Hello! This is my first post for my OSU capstone class. It feels like I’m at the end of a long journey. I started at OSU’s CS post-bacc program back in 2017. I was a total newbie at the time and had only seen programming from shows and movies. I knew I liked computers and I’ve always been STEM oriented, so I decided to stray away from my pre-med journey and onto a tech based one.

My career has not always been straight forward. I worked as a Medical Assistant for a number of years in San Diego and Portland. After deciding medicine wasn’t it for me, I took a gamble and interned for one of the web agencies here in Portland. It was exciting and new because I had never worked with a development team before and it was an opportunity to get my foot in the door within the tech industry. I learned a lot about agile based development and CI/CD within my internship, and it eventually led to a full-time offer as a Web Developer. I loved working with clients and managing their projects, and that eventually led to me eventually landing a new role as a Program Manager. Although I’m no longer developing code, I’m still involved with development teams as I help them align sprints and quarterly goals. Coming from a development background has helped immensely as I’m able to understand the development process for the teams I work with and that’s helpful when planning out milestones for certain projects.

All the job opportunities that I’ve had were while I was a part-time student at OSU. The road has been bumpy, especially with algorithms, but now that I’m at the end I’m glad to have learned what I have since I can apply it to my future career prospects.

On a side note, I’m living in Portland with my wife, 5 month old baby (she was born during algorithms course), and our Australian Shepherd named Azula. I’m into golfing (trying to get my daughter into it) and rock climbing. They both helpsto de-stress after a long week of school/work.