About Me
(in about 1036 words)
Intro
I am a co-founder and the CTO of Arthena where I build tools to price fine art quickly, accurately, and at scale. I also advise startups, and I invest in people and ideas through a small venture fund. I am particularly interested in projects that touch health and safety, imaging, social impact, and aerospace. If you think I can be helpful to you or would like to meet me, please feel free to get in touch.
Currently
At Arthena, I have learned how to build teams, manage people, shape culture, develop relationships with customers, sell enterprise products, and build on-line predictive models with technologies like Dask, Dagster, TensorFlow, and spaCy. I primarily work as a data engineer but have broad experience across Arthena’s stack.
Some history
My parents put a computer in my bedroom in 1993 when I was 3. It was an old Tandy that ran MS-DOS. My favorite games were Street Rod 2, Wolfenstein 3D, and Tom and Jerry. It had a mechanical keyboard and a turbo button. To this day, I still don't know what pressing the turbo button really did.
We subscribed to AOL in 1995. I still remember installing it from a floppy disk onto our brand new Packard Bell. It took years for me to send my first email.
In the summer of 1996, my uncle purchased MegaRace from Media Play and installed it on my mom's work computer. I might have endangered her business by using her computer too much.
At 7, I discovered the mini-games hidden in Microsoft Office. I also beat Minesweeper on expert for the first time.
At 8, my parents bought me a Sony Mavica MVC-FD71 digital camera after I stole their SLR one too many times. It could fit 10 images to a floppy disk at a 0.3MP resolution. I still have it and it still works. I've been taking photographs ever since, now with a Nikon D750, D800, and occasionally with a Mamiya 6II.
At 10, I built my first website with Microsoft FrontPage on our Pentium III Gateway. My website was terrible.
I was 11 when I built my first Tesla Coil (without the permission of my parents). Over the next few years, I built several more including one of the first audio modulated coils and one of the first DRSSTCs.
When I was 12, I set the all-time high record at my local laser tag facility by reverse engineering the charging station and weapon protocols with a photo-resistor, micro-cassette recorder, and a lot of patience. I was unstoppable.
At 13, I went to space camp and fell in love. I went back two more times and promised myself that I'd work in space. I've since helped build three generations of satellites and have contributed to two more.
At 14, I was almost expelled for finding a backdoor into my high school's file server and telling everyone but the faculty members about it. Later that year, I figured out how to turn off the internet firewall by editing system registry keys. I anonymously shared my work months later.
At 16, I participated in a foreign exchange program in Dortmund, Germany. Since then, I've gone back almost every year.
14 - 17, I played a lot of video games. My favorites included Counter Strike Source, Command and Conquer 3, Halo 2, and Age of Empires II.
At 18, In the summer before college, my friends and I started playing Muggle Quidditch. We went on to start over 8 teams in the International Quidditch Association including the Buffalo Quidditch Society. At our height, we were ranked third in the IQA. Although I don't play anymore, you can still see pictures of me holding a broom while wearing a chess camp t-shirt on facebook.
At 19, I took my first graduate course and published my first academic paper.
At 20, I co-authored a grant to build a satellite and managed a 60+ person team for the next two years. You can read more about that here.
Ask me in person for other stories that I'm afraid to share with the internet.
I like
- Running
- Skiing
- Sailing and the sea
- Space
- Summer
- Books
- Colored pencils (Faber-Castell Polychromos)
- Podcasts (The Daily, Planet Money, The Indicator, This American Life, 99% Invisible, The Economist, Radiolab, Hidden Brain, Inquiring Minds, and others)
- Good design
- Photography
Travel / Geography
- I am from originally from Buffalo, New York. I have since lived in Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York.
- I've been to ~ 50 countries, some of which I have forgotten, and many of which I would like to revisit.
- In 2016, I visited: Canada, Ethiopia, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Italy, Romania, Sweden, Norway, Svalbard, Panama, Costa Rica, Uganda, Japan, and the UAE, mostly in that order.
- In 2017, I visited: Canada, Japan, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium, the U.K., Spain, Iceland, France, Switzerland, Ethiopia, and Luxembourg.
- In 2018, I visited: Canada, France, Italy, Israel, and the U.K.
- In 2019, I visited: Canada, England, France, and Switzerland.
- In 2020, I barely traveled 20 blocks. I stayed in New York and remodeled an apartment.
- In 2021, I hope to start traveling again.
- I am an Oregon Trail II enthusiast.
Fun facts
- I have a list of thousands of ideas, like creating matching bow ties for cats and humans.
- I almost always have a sketchbook with me and a 01 Sakura Pigma Micron Pen.
- I can't locate every country on a map.
- I operate a small angel fund with terrible returns.
- I break about 30 traffic laws on a cruiser, onewheel, bicycle, or electric skateboard every single day.
- I added this page because so many people complained that my site was just my resume.
I dream of
- always finding inspiration.
- enabling a brighter future.
- doing better.
- you not checking the commit history for earlier drafts of this file.
Websites from people I admire
- Alex Peysakhovich
- Chris Lengerich
- Chris Saad
- Duncan Tomlin
- Hawley Moore
- Holman Gao
- Ian Webster
- Johanna Flato
- Judy Mou
- Kristina Monakhova
- Noah Trueblood
- Ruoxi Wang
- Tom Sachs
If we are friends and you feel like you belong on this list, you're probably right. I'm sorry I forgot about you. Pester me and I'll add you.