I was born in 1977 and raised in Wheeling for the duration of my childhood. My mother is a teacher and my father has been on a roller coaster of jobs originating with owning an asphalt paving company and ending with his current self-owned consulting firm Midwest Pavement Consultants. I was confused throughout high school in regards to what I wanted to do for a living. I was accepted into programs to study aviation, journalism, and engineering at various universities, but opted to attend a local community college and pursue my dream of rock stardom instead. I worked for a couple years in a music store while recording an album and interning as a recording engineer at Nightingale Conent studios. Upon realizing the rock star dream would likely not be realized I threw in the towel and went to work for Dad.

I spent a little over 2 years working for my father as a construction manager for projects in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Illinois; some of which lasted longer than two months. In the off season, I began taking computer classes at a local college and got hooked on them. I couldn’t seem to take enough programming classes, and also began to get my math skill up to speed, all the while earning a 4.0 GPA. I decided at this point that I wanted to pursue a career in computers.

After searching for quite some time, I landed a programming job as a contractor in Motorola. My job was to program various scripting languages and Visual Basic front end software to help with some process automation centered around 3D scanning. After 2 years working in this position, my supervisor and I teamed up and formed CAVLab, Inc. our own 3D scanning, product inspection, and reverse engineering company in 2001 and opened our doors in 2002. It would be another 2 years before I would get my first paycheck.

In the meantime, I worked part-time at a local fitness center to pay the bills and began focusing more on exercise and fitness. I stumbled upon adventure racing due to Mark Burnett’s Eco-Challenge Expedition race and was immediately hooked. I formed Team Fat Otter and began racing as much as possible. I’ve since formed a solid team and began directing races as well.

Currently I continue to focus on the success of CAVLab, Inc. After 6 years in business, we continue to grow at a steady pace. Team Fat Otter continues to race and our inventory of races I direct continues to grow. I own my own home in Mundelein, I’m seeing an amazing woman, I ride a Harley, I have a Chihuahua named Pita, and look at every day as a new day of possibility.