from Rocket Science to Business Solutions

I spent the first few years of my life living overseas after I was born.  We then settled in Fresno.  My father was a professor at CSU Fresno (aka, Fresno State) for several years. He, along with my mother, then started their own accounting software company along with a management institute.  They would provide training in management.  With the accounting software business, they initially created their own programming language and started in the agriculture industry, later branching out to trucking, nursuries, and other vertical markets.

Through my years in Fresno, I excelled at many things. I was admitted to the Mentally Gifted Minors (MGM) Program for second grate and continued through graduation of high school (now called Gifted and Talented Education, GATE).

After learning how to swim at a young age, I was able to join the Fig Garden Dolphins Swim team and swam all the way through high school.  My sophomore year, I was name MVP for winning all my Junior Varsity events.  My senior year of high school, One of the relay teams I was on made it to state finals to compete.

During high school, I was involved in State Mock Trial, Model United Nations, Junior Statesman of America, California Tean Leadership Program. I was also proud to be selected and attended the Summer Science Program, an NSF Young Scholars Program at the time (now run entirely by Alumni, of which I’m the Boulder campus Field trip coordinator andthe open house Event Captain).

(For those trying to figure if I was in your class in school, I attended the following schools with the following teachers:

Malloch Elementary: Kindergarden, 1st with school with Mrs. Abachi

Gibson Elemetary: 2nd Ms Weisner [now Mrs. Baird], 3rd Mr Allen Macy

Machester GATE: 4th Mrs Dixson, 5th Ms Klassen, 6th Mrs Markarian

Computech Middle School and Edison High School

University of Michigan was my next stop, having pursued undergraduate studies in Aerospace Engineering and Master’s of Engineering in Space Systems and Applied Remote Sensing ang Geographics Information Systems.  While at the university, I participated in many actitivies – Solar Car Team, Water Polo, Amateur Radio Club, Graduate Student Instructor, a member of the Timed Doppler Interferometer (TIDI). I even had some interesting opinions in college. You can check them out in my Letters to the Michigan Daily.

My first job out of graduate school was working on the Ground System of the Hubble Space Telescope and then on the Science Instrument Test System (SITS) team. SITS simulated the Hubble Space Telescope down to the connector that the science instrument, or camera/spectrometer, would plug into when installed.  I was responsible for regression testing, fixing bugs, updating the users manual, transferring old equipment to NOAA, user support, WFC3 Command and Telemetry Database Manager, COS Flight Software testing, Asset tracking, managing work assignments of peers, training.

I then work on Deep Impact providing ground system support for two ground systems, AMMOS provided by JPL and OASIS-CC provided by CU LASP.  the support included command and telemetry database maintenance, test support, usage of the ground system, training and providing a mission support area at Ball Aerospace for launc hand on-flight support.  Following the smashing success of Deep Impact on July 4, 2005, I was assigned to work on Kepler, an extra-solar earth size planet finder mission as the ground system engineer defining the command and telemetry database and providing any support for the ground systems they will be using.  As this project was squeezed for budget dollars from NASA, I was laid off.

This lead me to run my own catering company, which I purchased in 2004.  I had other people running it for me prior to this and I took over in 2006.  I am excited about what I learned on my 6 year journey and proud of the accomplishments I made along the way.  Including growing sales at least 50% per year to an equivalent of 750K in 2010 when I sold the business. I was also named the DGLCC Entrepreneurial Man of the Year in 2008.

I took some time off and did a Pacific Northwest Tour – traveling from california to Oregon to Washington and then back to Colorado via Idaho and Utah.  It was an amazing trip.

After some soul searching and exploring the Denver entrepreneurial scence, I started a marketing company with new business partner.  we did pretty well but ran into some issues and decided that it wouldn’t work.

This lead me to help an auction company in Longmont, Pacific Auction, with some of their marketing needs at the time.  I decided that it was time to head back to my roots and re-enter the market for an engineering job.  While I was looking for my next Engineering job, I worked full time at the auction house in the office. Here I helped improved a few processes and deal with client needs on a daily basis.

I landed a Test Engineer Position at Raytheon testing the Ground System that will be flying the NOAA weather satellites.  Of course, if you know of someone who has or wants to build a satellite, we can augmenet the common ground system to fly their satellite as well.

updated 26 May 2015