I was born in Caracas, Venezuela — one day before a lunar eclipse, which had my mom really worried for some reason. Nothing happened.
We moved to Miami, FL when I was 12. The US was never the plan, we just kind of up and went. Moving here changed me — mostly because I met some fascinating people I would have never met otherwise.
I watched the Iron Man movie right before we left. Loved Tony Stark, but what I really wanted was a Jarvis. So 12 year old me decided to build one. Only problem: I didn't know how to code and all the tutorials were in English. So I taught myself English, then taught myself to code. It's been a thing ever since.
Which is how I ended up at UF studying computer science, where I did some research at the SimLab — medical simulation for training battlefield doctors. It was cool, it scratched an itch. But I was more drawn to the startup energy around campus. Joined a few startups, ended up at a game dev studio, learned at breakneck pace. I really liked shipping code that went out the door that same day.
Then I went to a hackathon. Someone brought a Tesla. I jailbroke it. Got a job.
Tesla taught me what fast actually looks like. After that, Microsoft — I'd wanted to work there since I was a kid poking around Windows 7. Ended up on battery optimization for Copilot before it shipped to a billion devices. Massive scale, but sometimes the problems didn't feel real.
So I joined G2X as CTO — federal procurement software. Turns out government problems are the most real problems I've found. I've ended up in rooms I never expected — working fraud cases with the FBI, redesigning aging data systems at CMS, presenting to the Coast Guard. Won an AFFIRM award for it. It's been cool.
I moved to Seattle for Microsoft. Picked up snowboarding and got way too into it — I'm on a Custom Camber X with step-on bindings, if that means anything to you. Started training BJJ, which is humbling in a way that's hard to explain until someone half your size chokes you out. I've got a motorcycle I tear apart on weekdays and take to the track on weekends. And somewhere in there I got really into espresso — still can't do latte art, but the coffee's good.