Look at a persons past, to see where they’re headed in the future.

Childhood (1985-03)

Born in 1985 as the youngest of four in small-town Ohio (Celina). Lost my mother to skin cancer when I was 5, engraining in my mind the fragility of life but also the gratitude for each new day. I remember spending summers at my grandmother’s dairy farm, helping out with bailing hay, driving tractor, and messing around with the electric fence!

My father is a welder/fabricator that started his own company (Duesway, Inc.) where I started working at 13 scrubbing toilets, taking out trash, and sweeping floors. Long story short, I learned at a young age the value of a sound work ethic. When 9/11 occurred a seed of service, or desire to help others, was planted in my heart.

Military Service (03-12)

Enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2003 shortly after graduating high school, with eyes set on protecting and defending our nation from what at the time was called the Global War on Terror. Leaving home and ‘popping my bubble’ via military service opened my mind in so many new ways. From the relationships and bonds forged with people from all over the world to experiencing humanitarian operations and getting to help people although we were trained to fight - showed me that we are all just HUMAN often looking for the same things - food, shelter, and belonging. Shared misery and shared sacrifice forms strong bonds just as powerful as family. I took great pride (as I hope you can see in the video below) in my service.

I also saw rampant fraud, waste, and abuse by the DoD - opening my eyes to hidden and exploited pretense of ‘supporting our troops’. This blind patriotism is supporting unethical private, for-profit, defense contractors like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman to name a few. Not only have have they been war-profiteering but our society’s love affair with military service has a tally in lives lost that only continues to grow by each new generation we ship off.

The men that I know who have died in service to our country are THE BEST men I have ever met or known! So why do we keep repeating this? We are the first civilization alive with the technology and knowledge to do better. Imagine the impact some of these men or women could’ve had when they returned to their community, to their homes and families…yet we will never know because their lives were cut short in combat or training for it. After starting my own family during enlistment and missing several milestones due to deployments, I decided to leave active service to concentrate on raising good kids and pursuing my education.

The Business World (2012-2024)

All business are not created equal - what we are seeing in the US right now is capitalism without competition, also known as exploitation. I have been a part of small family-owned businesses, large corporate behemoths, helped dozens of folks start their own company and in 2019 I formed my own medical device startup. After finishing my MBA at UNC Charlotte in 2018 I was inspired to create a safe wearable to address injuries sustained during service that would replace the use of opioids for pain management. What I have learned along the way is that if you value profits above all else, which may be ideal for ownership - is that everyone else’s purpose, passion, and happiness is left in the dust.

WE CAN DO BETTER! The constant chasing of money has hollowed out various sectors of our economy hurting the average American worker while benefitting an elite few and redistributing wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 10% over the past 40+ years. The tax burden has shifted from American Corporations to American workers and corporate greed has all but made the ‘American Dream’ out of reach. I want to right those wrongs.

The Political Arena (2024-TBD)

Similar to why I joined the Marine Corps, I feel a call to serve. I was taught to always leave a place better than I found it…and we can agree that our political system has some structural issues and is not fulfilling its duty. That’s why I’m running, if I can make any positive impact to remove corruption from the political process that BOTH SIDES are guilty of, then I’ll know my children and future generations can live in a society that cooperates and works together.

I want to help people and I believe this is a chance for me to do so. I don’t plan to be a normal politician, the thought of asking for money makes me cringe. I’m for a constitutional amendment to make gerrymandering illegal, an end to Corporate Lobbying, moving to non-partisan primaries so you don’t have to be an extremist to get to the general election, adding term limits to Congress, reversing the harmful Citizen’s United decision that allows extreme dark money to flood our politics. But I’m also new at this and know that I have a lot to learn. Yet that notion of learning excites me and I would regret not trying. Wish me luck!