I first encountered EA in late 2022 and in the summer of 2023 joined the Intro EA Virtual Program as my first real exposure to EA concepts and the EA community. 

Over those weeks in the course, diving into different EA topics, ideas and thoughts and getting to discuss them with my facilitator and fellow attendees, my connection to it grew.

I began feeling a desire to help the world around 2014. This desire first pushed me to start volunteering for local geographical organizations in small efforts such as picking up trash in neighborhoods, assisting non profits with various manual labor type tasks and mentoring young adults. But those activities didn't satisfy my need. So I tried a different strategy, which involved me changing careers to becoming a teacher and thereby getting to help others directly through education, and acquiring purposeful and family supporting careers. That worked for a few years, but afterwards I realized that it wasn't satisfying in every way I needed. The impact at the end of the day was very individual, so thereby minimal in a grand scheme. In essence I wanted to help many more people than the 100 students per year I was serving as a teacher.

I think that's one of the main reasons EA calls to me. It's about helping the world, and it looks at not just my town, but the world, not just those alive now, but in the future too. 

From a professional perspective my background is in engineering and program management in the Aerospace, Defense and Manufacturing industries. I have also worked in Higher Ed focused in training and workforce development. 

I am dedicating the summer of 2023 to figuring out what I would like the next professional chapter to be for me. Now that I know more about EA, I am strongly considering roles in which I can translate my skills to the EA world.

If you know of an open role that is related to project/program management, operations, logistics, jack-of-all-trades, bringing groups together, community building, etc in the EA community please reach out. In addition as an engineer my background might be suited to some opportunities in the green energy sector, so if you know of opportunities again I would love to know! 

Thanks

If you think I can in any way, do reach out!