About

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About Me

I'm a late 20s (maybe by the time you read this early 30s) man living in the Pacific Northwest. I grew up in Southern California, I went to school in Upstate New York, I began my career in the DC Metro.

I'm married to a lovely lady that is my partner in all I do, Sami, and we have one dog and will soon have a house in the Snohomish County area.

I deeply treasure friendship, pursue a balanced life full of virtue, and seek mastery in the fields of technology strategy and certain types of systems analysis. My goal is to one day, through being a VC or otherwise, be able to pick ideas and align incentives such that incredible creators and the public both benefit from extending humanity's reach with new products.

My hobbies, as is partially clear below, are engaging with science and science fiction, studying, lifting weights, dancing, shooting, and seeking to both understand and impact the world.

Career

Fundamentally, I'm interested in areas of technology strategy and product management where thinking a little bit harder about the user's experience, or learning a little bit more about the technology space, can turn a good product into a great one, or a great one into a magical one.

I love the strategy of feature roadmaps that allow you to build to a vision you might not have reached all at once, the puzzle of figuring out how to leave room to grow for the future, the warmth of letting users produce their own solutions on your product and then watching them do it.

I own connectivity, developer experience, extensibility, and documentation for Power Query, integrated in 8 Microsoft products with millions of monthly active users. I manage connectors built at Microsoft as well as ones delivered by a certification program I built from the ground up, delivering 95% of the new connectors delivered in the last 2 years.

I also own query diagnostics and power user insights to allow them to better understand what their queries are doing, and integration of connector and diagnostic capabilities across the product family.

Responsible for:

  • Enterprise connectors (SQL, Azure SQL, Excel, Google Big Query - See more at https://powerquery.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/ )
  • Extensibility for Power Query (Bringing Custom and Certified Connectors to GA, Partner management, surfacing 45+ Power BI connectors)
  • SDK and Developer Experience for Power Query

Professional History

I attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), graduating in 2010 with a BS in Applied Physics (Engineering Control Systems focus, minor in Entrepreneurship*) and then in 2013 with a MS in Mechanical Engineering (spare courses primarily in management).

2012-2013 I worked as a Jr. Electrical Engineer contracted to NSWC Carderock on magnetic anti-mine warfare. Alas, sequestration and a poor job match led to an early end of that job.

2013-2014 I worked with my best friend and college roommate, Paul Bragulla, on emerging markets analysis and modeling. While we saw some success, we didn't see the growth that we wanted to.

Shutting down Prokalkeo, I took my growing technical skills and leveraged them into a broader understanding of technical business analytics tools, some systems engineering, etc.

2014-2016 I worked in Sales Engineering, Technical Operations, and Application Development at Logi Analytics, a small business intelligence vendor focused in the embedded space.

I moved to the west coast with my then fiancee, and ended up working from mid-2016 through late 2017 for R-Health, one of Logi's customers, as a Technical Business Analyst. As the only person on my team, I handled the entire lifecycle, including all the requirements analysis.

In late 2017, I joined Microsoft as a Senior Program Manager on the Power Query team, where I've been since.

Hobbies and Studies

Great Books Project

Since 2018 I've been working through the Great Books of the Western World. For the first two years I did so at a pace of about 110 pages a week. Recently I've moved from 7 days to about 10 days, so I would have more time to study other things.

Every six months or so I write an update on what I've been reading and thinking about, and I hope to clean up my notes so I can publish them too.

Technical Skills

I pursued control systems theory to a moderate degree in college, but never applied it professionally. I have always found it fascinating though, and am hoping to pick it up again to a serious degree.

I also have an interest in category theory, like every mathematical dilettante, but I hope to understand a little bit more how to use it seriously with data platforms (and it can tie back to controls!)

Finally, I'm trying to learn mathematical finance. This is the newest area of interest here, so we'll see where it goes.

Physical Training

Growing up, I did gymnastics, a little bit of fencing, a little bit of soccer, a little bit of tennis. I learned a lot from doing a wide array of sports, but my focus predominantly since my college years has been on lifting weights and dancing.

While I didn't articulate it so well when I was younger, I view fitness as another area to seek balance in, and try to pursue a mix of raw strength, endurance, and dexterity.

Powerlifting

Tacoma Rookie Competition

When I was 16, spurred on by my former champion dad and my own 'Freshman 15', I began powerlifting. I've been doing it ever since.

In February 2020, I competed (163 lb class) alongside my wife at the Tacoma Rookie Competition. We both respectively took 1st in our categories, I took 1st for all men by every comparison metric, and 1st for the competition overall in most metrics (2nd in all others).

My wife, Sami, took 2nd or 3rd in all metrics for women.

My lifts were:

  • 413.3 lb squat
  • 275.5 lb bench
  • 518.1 lb deadlift
  • Total of 1207 lbs.

My all time best lifts:

  • 460 lb squat (when I hadn't deadlifted in 6 months - generally 440 lb)
  • 310 lb bench (inconsistent)
  • 555 lb deadlift (pre-injury. pre-COVID I was regularly putting up 530 lbs again)

Ballroom Dance

Holy Cross 2012

I was a member of RPI's Ballroom Team in senior year of undergrad and the first two years of graduate school.

I've danced all 19 of the main ballroom 'dancesport' dances, though my focus was primarily on American style, and Rhythm at that.

At the end of my college dance career, I competed Silver Rhythm at Holy Cross 2012.

Running

I utterly loathe cardio, but I recognize its necessity. As such, I'm working towards a 20 minute 5k. Once I achieve that, I'm done. During COVID I've been doing tabata sprints.

Writings

My writing interests primarily revolve around questions of how to live life well, social technologies (by which I mean sets of self-perpetuating rules that allow people to do more than they would without them, like the US Constitution), virtue and metavirtue, political philosophy, and epistemology.