About

I deferred my enrollment at the University of Arizona for a year to focus on advancing my career. I believed that a year of concentrated effort would allow me to achieve my short-term goals and start college with a clean slate, followed by four years of focused study. However, I ended up participating in the U of A's spring hackathon before enrolling as a student. There, I was recruited by Sunquest, one of the sponsor companies, for a summer role before the fall semester. I enjoyed my team and project so much that I decided to stay on full-time when college started in the fall. By junior year, I accepted a director role in McKesson's oncology department and traveled to San Francisco every other week, scheduling around my computer science exams and jazz band concerts. I channeled my resilient nature through challenging weeks when work deadlines coincided with school finals or an out-of-state jazz band trip—or all three together—and somehow, in the end, I graduated magna cum laude.

Since then, my career has remained in the healthcare field, which provides endless problem-solving opportunities. At McKesson, I built a mobile engineering organization from two to thirteen people during the height of the pandemic. To expand my diversity of healthcare vertical experience, I joined Sidecar Health to learn about the payer side of healthcare delivery. However, a layoff wiped out the entire product development organization. I took a month off to enjoy a vacation with my family. Then, I joined League, where I led a professional services engineering team of 40 individuals.

The trumpet never stopped. I kept performing through it all—sitting in where I could, playing sessions, and recording tracks for albums. I never let my engineering career take over completely. My two lives ran parallel.