Early Years

I grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, where I took an early interest in music, writing, and computer science. I started writing HTML in middle school, followed by C# and C++. I also played French Horn in state solo/ensemble competitions, read voraciously, and wrote frequently for class and personal projects. 

University

I attended Kalamazoo College, where I became enamored with Economics. I was particularly interested in the economics of innovation and small business theory—how businesses grow and innovate. I pursued this interest across a variety of research projects and papers, while also becoming a regular in the math and political science departments to better articulate my ideas, both logically and philosophically. I worked as a TA in Econometrics and served as a math and english tutor at the local elementary school. Ultimately, I graduated with Honors and winning the Warren G Harding Memorial Prize in Economics. 

Early Career

After college and an arduous thesis process, I moved to Traverse City, Michigan, where I worked as a wine server in a winery tasting room. I would walk new people through the wine tasting experience, answer questions about our wines and wine making process, and generally act as a salesman for our product.

After a somewhat wine soaked summer, I joined at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, first as a programmer in the data department, then as an analyst on the analytics team. I was responsible for every step of the information pipeline, from processing and storing raw data, to analysis and regression work, to client reports and presentations. I managed one of our largest analytics clients and produced reports for national audiences.

I ultimately left GQR to help two friends at a Fin-Tech start-up, where I performed a variety of data operations responsibilities. I primarily onboarded client accounts and data, and reported on internal metrics for leadership and investors. I worked there until they could get their operations team up and running with longterm employees (I refuse to work for friends as a long term job).

Up to the present

I’ve always been interested in data and politics and, after ranting for an hour about how I thought Democrats used data poorly in Michigan in 2016, I was offered the position of Data and Analytics Director for the Michigan Democratic Party. I spent the next 3 sleepless years of my life completely overhauling how the party used and thought about data in Michigan. I built out new processes for data storage/management, voter targeting, and analysis. Ultimately, I built a 10 person data and analytics team from scratch in preparation for the 2020 election in Michigan.

After overhauling the MDP data department, I joined Justworks, a start-up providing HR Software and benefits to small and medium sized businesses. It was a return to my interest in small businesses and innovation economics. I currently work as a Lead Data Analyst, where I partner with finance and product leadership to study customer growth in new business areas and build internal forecasting tools for financial analysis.