01 // The Shift
My academic foundation was Cognitive Sciences — brain-imaging research and MatLab programming. After graduation I drifted into SaaS sales and marketing, which quietly introduced me to the dance between on-premise infrastructure and cloud. When the pandemic-era layoff hit, that quiet interest had a chance to become the main thing.
02 // Early Ramp
I dove into KPMG's Data Science specialization and spent the back half of 2020 in a SharpestMinds fellowship, mentored by Dr. Ilya Golding. Python, data analytics, the honest rhythm of going from raw CSV to signal — that's where the foundations actually landed.
03 // IT Field Work
Early 2021 I got my CompTIA A+ and stepped into field support for the LA County Registrar during the 2020 Presidential Elections — 99.99% uptime across polling sites, no excuses available. Network+ followed, which led to a contract at Pit Crew IT Services in San Antonio imaging Chromebooks in volume to support nurses at COVID-19 testing centers nationwide.
04 // Scaling Up
Security+ and the CompTIA Secure Infrastructure Specialist designation came next. At STRAC (a health non-profit) I supported COVID-19 testing sites across several states and started writing Python to automate the login dance the testing workflow required — first taste of automation paying for itself.
Then Digital Hands — 300+ Holiday Inn properties, heavy on Active Directory. I leaned into Chrome extensions for fast hotel-system access, macros for the repetitive clicks, and PowerShell for user setup, policy updates, and AD hygiene. The outcome was simple: I could carry more tickets, faster and more accurately, than peers doing the same work by hand.
05 // Reflection
The two years from layoff to landed career were the most concentrated learning period of my life. Resilience, adaptability, continuous learning — the usual platitudes — plus one more: automation compounds. Every hour I spent scripting something returned itself many times over. That's the habit I carried forward into every role since.
