Learn about my journey...

Below is a timeline of major events in my life beginning after high school and focusing primarily on my educational and career highlights with some personal events sprinkled in.

The timeline begins after high school and moves forward chronologically as you scroll down. Learn about my professional and personal journey towards becoming a motivated data professional.

2005

Upon graduating high school, college was not a realistic option for me and my family financially so I entered the work force and got my first job in commission sales at Sears selling kitchen appliances in their Brand Central department.

2006

After roughly a year working at Sears, I embarked on a new career path in automotive sales working at Capitol Mitsubishi.  I thoroughly fell in love with selling cars and felt I could be happy pursuing this career track for the majority of my professional life.

2008

The Great Recession was particularly rough on the automotive sales industry.  I remember receiving a commission check for a total of $0, they actually printed the check!  This drove me to pursue other career options.  I bounced around between dealerships and sales positions in other industries including home remodeling material sales and financial services where I served as Jr. Commodities Broker and obtained a Series 3 license.

2010

I spent most of my childhood living with my single mother who later remarried after I was an adult.  To my utter surprise, my step father was gracious enough to offer to help financially sponsor a college degree if wished to pursue one.  In 2009, I dipped my toe in the water with a couple classes at De Anza College later enrolling full time at West Valley College in 2010.

2011

After my first full semester in community college, I began to pursue my education with true passion.  I joined the student government first as a senator and later obtaining a leadership position as treasurer.  I was a member of Alpha Gamma Sigma, the honor society of the California Community Colleges system and eventually took a leadership position there as well leading their fundraising programs.  I was also a founding member of West Valley's finance club as my intention was to pursue an economics major and a career in finance.

2012

I still remember my excitement upon receiving a phone call from the School of General Studies at Columbia University informing me of my acceptance.  As a fully fledged undergraduate college at Columbia, General Studies was a phenomenal opportunity to obtain a traditional Ivy League education for a non-traditional transfer student like myself.  Neither of my biological parents received their Bachelor's degree with my mother ending her education after her Associates and my father receiving trade education in the Navy, and while my sister did attend university, she never completed an undergraduate degree.  I now had the opportunity to become the first member of my immediate family to earn a Bachelor's degree and at one of the best universities in the country no less.  I moved to New York that summer and began the final phases of my education at Columbia University.

2013

After matriculating to Columbia I immediately declared my major in economics and obtained a part-time work study position in the Office of Alumni and Development.  I enthusiastically began building a network in the finance industry focusing on investment banking and private equity.  I took as many informational interviews as possible meeting people in the industry and learning as much as possible.  The more I learned about investment banking the less enthused I became with a career in the field.  Ultimately I made the decision to change my major from economics to an interdisciplinary major in the Anthropology Department.  This would allow me to explore many different areas of study with the intention of pursuing graduate education.

2014

After roughly a year and a half in a humanities major, I was learning the hard way that I am not a very good academic writer.  While as an economics major I was a Dean's List student, after switching my major my grades started to decline despite putting in as much work if not more.  Simultaneously, the financial burden of Columbia tuition was beginning to put a strain on my non-traditional family dynamic.  At this time I decided it was best to take a step back and rethink my path.  At the end of the Fall semester of 2014 I decided to take a leave of absence from pursuing my undergraduate degree.

2015

In early 2015 I received a position as a Sr. Administrative Assistant at BMO Capital Markets supporting the Global Head of Corporate and Investment Banking.  While my duties were primarily administrative, serving on a C-Suite executive's staff would provide me with an incredible amount of insight into investment banking and allow me to revisit the idea of pursuing a career in the field.

2016

After a year working at BMO, I again made the decision that investment banking was not the right career path for me.  I also decided it would be best to leave New York and explore new opportunities back home in the Bay Area.  In mid 2016 I received a position at Stanford University, Medical Center Development as a Program Manager supporting the fundraising efforts on behalf of the School of Medicine.

2017

Working at Stanford provided tremendous learning and professional development opportunities.  Additionally, the role I filled included data work as one of the primary areas of responsibilities.  I was being formally introduced to data and analytics as a career option for the first time.  Surprisingly to me, I began to realize that I had been working with data for years prior to this, often acting as a the unofficial "Excel guy" while working in Alumni Relations at Columbia.  I ravenously devoured every learning opportunity at my disposal, taking online coding courses, professional development courses in SQL provided by Stanford and Tableau's in-person product training provided to my team at Medical Center Development.

2018

My role at Stanford and the learning opportunities it provided gave me a new passion to pursue a career in data.  The first step would be to complete my undergraduate degree.  I was lucky enough that my manager at Medical Center Development was willing to allow me to work remotely and move back to New York to finish my degree.  I moved in May and began courses again at Columbia in June taking a full load of courses during the Summer and Fall semesters while continuing to fulfill full-time responsibilities to Medical Center Development.

2019

In February of 2019 an endeavor that began nearly a decade ago finally came to an end when I was awarded a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University.  My favorite part of this stage of my journey was getting to take a computer science course taught in python during my final semester in Fall 2018.  Unfortunately, later in 2019 my grandfather passed away.  I had left my position with Stanford in February that year to pursue full-time data analyst positions and felt it would be best to move back to California and move in with my grandmother to help her adjust to life without my grandfather.  I moved to Napa and began pursuing data analyst positions in the Bay Area.  In September of 2019 I was offered a position at Hamilton Zanze Real Estate Investments as a Data Analyst in the Asset Management department.  

2020

By this time I had moved to South San Francisco as my grandmother felt more confident living on her own and I needed to be closer to the office.  While 2020 upended life across the world, I was enmeshed in building a modern data stack and delivering new data resources to my team and the broader company.  This was a difficult year for the world but I have to admit that for me this was one of the best years I've had from a professional perspective.  I was privileged enough to still have a job and more so to be doing work I truly love.  I was quickly promoted from an entry level Analyst to an Associate and was becoming a pillar around all things data and technology for our team and the firm.

2021

While it was difficult and took longer than I'd hoped, I had successfully navigated a difficult organizational structure and office politics to deploy a more modern data stack anchored by a relational database in Microsoft Azure and Tableau as a front-end where I could deliver new dashboards and data resources to the Asset Management team and the rest of the company.  I had built several dashboards by this point and the organization began recognizing the real value that could be delivered.  I led the effort to hire and onboard the second member of our budding data team.

2022

Many began to rethink the way they live and work due to the pandemic.  For me this meant thinking more seriously about my future living situation.  I considered moving to different states, Austin, TX and Miami, FL seemed to be talked about by many.  Ultimately, I decided I wanted to be closer to family and decided a move to Napa, CA where my mother grew up and much of my extended family still lives.  Excitingly, I was able to purchase my first home in early 2022.  This was a major moment in my life as in addition to not receiving undergraduate education, my parents never owned their own home either.  I was ecstatic at all I had accomplished, an Ivy League graduate and home owner with a successful and growing career.  Later in 2022 we hired a Jr. Data Analyst as the third member of the growing data team at Hamilton Zanze.

2023

Unfortunately, in January of this year, like many others in the commercial real estate industry, I found myself in the position of having my role eliminated due to cost saving measures.  I leave behind a body of work at Hamilton Zanze that I am proud of and confident will continue delivering value for years to come.  I am grateful that I found a new opportunity with Cox Automotive Inc. about midway through the year and began working as a Sr. BI Manager for their Business Analytics team.  An exciting new step in my career changing pace as I move from a small company atmosphere to a large enterprise environment.

TODAY

I look forward to new stages in my journey confident in my skills and knowledge and my ability to solve problems and deliver real value to the teams I'm a part of and the stakeholders I support.