I have lived in Chicago all my life. I developed an interest in computers at a young age, and started toying around with programming in high school. Later, I started developing independent games. Although I was using very basic platforms for development, I learned the basics of project management and the work involved with seeing large-scale projects through to the end.
I pursued my passion for game development in college. I attended Columbia College Chicago with a concentration in Game Programming. There, I got a solid grounding in more traditional programming languages and methodologies. Columbia's diverse curriculum exposed me to all sorts of different disciplines, one of which being web development.
By graduation, I decided that video games were not the best path for me, and that web development would provide a more satisfying career. Shortly after graduation, I was hired as a summer intern at OgilvyOne Worldwide, and was asked to stay on as a freelance web developer after my internship period ended.