Story
Fifteen international slots. I got one.
Before Annapolis I'd already spent two years as a commissioned officer in Singapore. Before that, at 18, I founded Da Capo Symphonic Winds — Singapore's first fully student-initiated national band. Seventy-three performers, twenty institutions, a sold-out concert. Nobody asked me to do it. I just thought it should exist.
That instinct has followed me everywhere since.
“Three years into Annapolis, a medical separation ended it. My military career ended at once. It wasn't the ending I planned. For a while it wasn't clear what came next either. But you figure it out. You move.”
What I took with me: an instinct for systems and a real appreciation for the work that keeps everything else from falling apart. Operations. Logistics. The part of every organization nobody thinks about until it stops working.
I found I was good at it. I found the problems nobody wanted to own were usually the most interesting ones. I'm now Director of Logistics at Aquaria Technologies — overseeing freight, warehousing, global supply chains, and the internal tools the company runs on. I taught myself TypeScript, React, Python, and GIS workflows to keep up with what the job demanded. At a startup, the job description is a starting point.
For a year and a half I taught saxophone and classical voice at a music school in Irvine. I'm still not sure how that fits neatly into everything else. I think that's kind of the point.
Home is less a place than a posture. I've found solid ground in Singapore, in Annapolis, in California — each one adding something the last one couldn't. I carry all of them.