My Hello World Moment

I began my journey as a cashier at my local Michaels, handling art supplies, keeping the shelves stocked with colorful paints, and interfacing with real artists. Their passion for making something that would endure, influence, transform, or deliver an experience left a profound impact on me. The beauty of the canvas reminds me of how life, untouched by our assumptions or innate biases, can be... utterly congruent to its truth. I moved on from Michaels earned my Undergraduate Degree from Texas Tech, which taught me much about hard work and determination to succeed. Many of my professors are still my friends today.

Beginning in 2017, I explored the world of professional sales, and I worked as an electrical associate at a Home Depot in Austin, Texas. My managers encouraged me to go out and converse with customers, and I discovered something wonderful. I met the most extraordinary people! People with even more unique and extraordinary ideas, and I got to dream with them about what they could accomplish given the right tools. We were told to empower the customers with our positivity and enable their visions with our time. I remember one customer very clearly. She came to look for a copper wire that had to meet precise specifications. She had these written on a little yellow legal pad, and she used it to gesture to the different coils of wire as she talked. We spent three hours talking about her project and meandered through the lumber section, lighting section, and even the plumbing aisles. Finally, after much deliberation, she bought her collected materials and waved goodbye. I remember the feeling of satisfaction that filled me throughout that whole experience. It was intoxicating. Troubleshooting and solving puzzles can be that way, and it has stayed just as addicting to me through the years. I am a data specialist, and that title sounds amusing to me because none of us are ever absolutely an "expert" in the entirety of data science, data analytics, or even just data management. But, that is one thing I love about my vocation. We, as data experts, are evolving, and as long as we are developing consistently, we are the "experts" in our craft. That could be why some call us data developers! Just like those fantastic designers at Michaels and Home Depot, we, too, are artists. As Data Artisans, we have an infinite canvas composed of billions of pixels, and our finest brushes are well-practiced keystrokes. We work with Digital Da Vincis in our day. We collectively paint by numbers open-sourced masterpieces that can cause impacts that are so much greater than ourselves. Results that we have not yet begun to envision existing now unrealized like acres of digital diamonds.