Update on My Life

I’m sorry its been so long since I’ve written! A lot has changed in my life recently, and I should tell you all about it. In brief,

• Finally graduated from Drexel University with both my bachelor and master degrees in electrical engineering. (Honors, baby!)
• Moved to Chicago. Technically, I’m currently living in Evanston, IL, at Northwestern University. See next point.
• Starting working with gifted students through Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development summer programs as a Residential Teaching Assistant. I spent the first half of the summer helping teach Computer Programming Honors: Java to middle school students, and I’m helping teach AP Computer Science to high school students for the remainder of the second half. My students are all amazing. The middle school kids produced some cool final projects, and the high schoolers are off to a really strong start. 16 hour days FTW!
• I’ve accepted a position as a software engineer at an awesome startup called BrightTag in downtown Chicago starting in August. I’m early in the company—employee 19—and the team is a dream team. The CEO is Mike Sands, the former CMO/COO of the original management team behind Orbitz. He helped take Orbitz from startup to IPO. I’m reporting directly to CTO Eric Lunt, who co-founded Feedburner, sold it to Google, and then spent the next several years as a senior tech guy at Google. Marc Kiven, the head marketing/sales guy, has also built and sold a couple companies, most recently selling Right Media to Yahoo!. Even the “ordinary” devs are awesome; they were all hand-picked, e.g., the head infrastructure guy was behind scaling Feedburner and some other Google stuff. Dream team. And they have awesome VCs and advisors. And the company culture fits like a glove. Collegial and relaxed with lots of laughter, playful teasing, and hanging out after work. Couldn’t be a better fit. I’m really freaking excited.

I’ll try to resume posting tutorials and ramblin’ thoughts in the near-ish future, but it likely won’t be til mid-August, after I finish my time at Northwestern and when I start at BrightTag. Looking forward to catching up with everyone!