My Origin Story

I'm going to try and keep this origin story as short as possible, if you want to learn more, you'll just have to contact me. I grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada. It was near Waterloo where BlackBerry was founded. I grew up tinkering with things and building stuff. I didn't travel in an airplane until I was 18, so road trips in Ontario were more normal. Technology was always influential given my location but I never thought I was smart enough to do it. Did I mention I suffered a brain injury when I was 16, where they cut a hole in my head? Feel free to ask me about it anytime.

I got into doing general contracting after dropping out of university studying psychology. I built houses (mostly additions) for just about five years before I saw the movie (yes you can laugh here) The Social Network. I remember leaving the theatre thinking, really? I can do that. So I started teaching myself code in the evenings. I knew enough about computers to get some things making sense, but it was that movie that really kicked off my learning programming. I got my first development job a few months later. One year after that I was working at BlackBerry on their open source team.

Three months after getting that job I left when our open source team was dissolved (I literally had no plan whatsoever). I jumped from job to job for a few years, then finally started my own little biz with my friend. That carried on for a while and when I had to find some freelancing work, eventually I ended up working remotely for Pfizer for nearly 6 years. Currently I'm a Cloud Architect for Amadeus Hospitality. I work from home, and I get to work with some amazing people who challenge me and inspire me to learn and grow more everyday.

I still bring on occasional clients through my company Grafite, but I do my best to avoid overloading myself, so I only take on a couple at any given time.