I build things that help people show up.

I grew up thinking I'd be a lawyer. I got clean in a homeless shelter instead — and I wouldn't trade the road between the two.

I grew up in Highland Springs, working-class, with both parents at home. I didn't know we were poor. I was in the talented-and-gifted classes and I was certain I'd go to UVA, study law and business, and become an attorney. Life had other plans.

For years I ran the same pattern. I'd build a life back up — a girlfriend, my license, a little money in the bank — and then I'd cross some arbitrary line I'd set for myself and decide I'd earned the right to drink and use again. It always ended in the same place: homeless at the Legacy Inn off Williamsburg Road, broke and wanting to die.

The night it finally turned, I was high, watching Intervention on TV and wondering why my own family wasn't doing that for me. In 2009 the drug stopped working, and I got clean. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and the thing I'm proudest of.

I got sober at The Healing Place, a shelter and recovery program on Richmond's Southside. The first few weeks felt amazing — for the first time in years I could see a way out. It wasn't easy: 250 people under one roof, and not all of them were really there to get better. I was.

From there I rebuilt, a day at a time. I met the woman who would become my wife and the mother of my son, and I ran a cab company — P&T, out of Church Hill — working nights, which were always an adventure. I loved my crew, and they knew they could count on me. I left the day the owner wanted me to give a customer special treatment I believed put my drivers in danger. That wasn't a call I was willing to make.

So I started over as a picker at Amazon's RIC2 fulfillment center. My son was on the way and money was tight, so I worked 50 to 70 hours a week and took business courses online at night. When an Outbound Flow Lead role opened, I jumped on it — and when that work was centralized to a new team in Seattle, I already knew the job well enough that they promoted me and moved me out to help build the playbook for it. My wife and son had stayed in Richmond, so I found my way back home onto the labor-planning team, earned two quick promotions, and became a Senior Business Analyst. When I was ready for a new challenge, I found it at Deltek, building the automations that sourced and cleaned the data behind GovWin. Somewhere in there, the analyst became a builder.

Now I run RVA Digital Works. I'm a well-rounded IT guy — development, data pipelines, analysis, automation, and a customer obsession I picked up at Amazon — and I wanted to put all of it to work for my own community, on my own terms. I build the websites and online presence that help Richmond small businesses I genuinely care about get found and taken seriously. I'm a little goofy and nerdy, and just as serious and intentional about the work. I value authenticity over polish, I love my family and my city, and my faith guides my feet.