I grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. We moved to north-central Illinois when I was in middle school. I finished high school where I earned admission to Purdue University for aerospace engineering. At Purdue I joined the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) and earned a scholarship after 2 years. When I graduated from Purdue with a bachelor's of science in aerospace engineering I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. I spent 6 and a half years on active duty and was stationed at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton as an Amphibious Assault Vehicle Platoon Commander. When I was a First Lieutenant I led my platoon of 54 Marines and 1 Navy Hospital Corpsman on the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit as a part of Battalion Landing Team 2/1. I spent 6 months aboard the USS Cleveland (LPD-7) and completed the deployment on September 12, 2001. After I was promoted to Captain I was sent to the Amphibious Vehicle Test Branch to support developmental testing of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV). For my remaining 2 and a half years on active duty I worked with engineers from General Dynamic Amphibious Systems to test the EFV while attending San Diego State University. In 2004 I graduated from San Diego State with a masters degree in mechanical engineering and resigned from active duty. I moved my family back to the Chicago suburbs where I started as a systems engineer for Northrop Grumman. I spent 17 and a half years performing several different roles including systems engineer, field service engineer, software engineer, and engineering manager. I traveled all over the world as an engineer including travel to Afghanistan in addition to achieving a second bachelors of science in software development at an online university. I spent my last 7 years at Northrop Grumman as an engineering manager where I mentored several early career engineers. In late 2021 I moved my family back to the San Diego area to accept a position as senior flight test engineer at Anduril Industries testing autonomous vehicles. My family consists of my wife and 3 children where we happily reside in San Marcos, California.
