Career

I am fortunate to have a career that’s both technically challenging and deeply interesting. I have spent 19 years breaking ground in new domains that have accelerated their respective industries, before the consumer market later adopted and expanded those technologies.

I started my professional work life after 5 years at Iowa State University, pursuing Computer Engineering with a focus on Electrical Engineering. Later in life I spent some time at Stanford on a professional development track related to Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation.

In 2007 I found myself at Visionix, a startup that was tackling cost effective helmet mounted displays, providing A-10 & F-16 fighter jets with Augmented Reality (HMIT). While the recession reduced funding, we took a slice of the market with the world’s first color system, Scorpion HMCS. I developed a major portion as a Mechanical and Electrical design engineer, then testing, compliance, and field integration. Later, as a Systems Engineer, I focused on integration with other fixed wing platforms, then helicopters, and joint research ventures. Scorpion went from concept to flight in less than a year, and scaled to over 1,000 delivered units, with further enhancements in industry leading motion tracking technology.

Visionix was acquired by Thales in 2013, where I focused on joint ventures for commercial aviation solutions including TopMax, where inventing core and innovative components was my focus. Later, diversification into military ground AR, on programs including SOCOM TALOS and Nett Warrior, where Thales radios provided a networking layer to augment the everyday soldier.

After 10 years at Visionix, opportunity came with Northrop Grumman, and a suite of systems related to Navigation, Targeting, & Survivability. I spent 3 years in Chicago working on site, until a move to NYC, where my reach expanded beyond a single facility. I am thankful to work with partners at DARPA, NASA, AFRL, DEVCOM, Skunkworks, and technology accelerator incubators at AFWERX & SOFWERX, as well as NGC-AS/DS/MS.

I currently spend a great deal of time helping projects that cross between capabilities, facilities, and silo’d domains. This allows me to consult as a subject matter expert (SME) across a wide variety of customers and products. Specifically, I operate within the Emerging Capabilities and Multi-Domain Sensing, Targeting, & Survivability groups as a Systems Architect. I focus on accelerating projects between TRL-3 and TRL-6.

As an extremely hands on technical engineer, I find myself frequently traveling to demonstrate capabilities to operators, gathering their feedback, and using it to innovate in a meaningful way. I feel relatively unique in this mindset, and attempt to promote it wherever possible.