I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on two acres of suburban land.  My brother, Matthew (Matt), and I spent all of our waking, non-school, daytime hours outdoors.  Nighttime hours were spent creating things on our computers or playing video games as a team.  Since we first began communication with one another and to this day, we have been discussing, analyzing and learning.

Until Matt and I moved out for college, our family never moved from that one house.  We agree that living in the same location and going to the same school for lower, middle, and high school taught us the importance and value of compounding relationships over time.  This carried over to college when we both chose to attend Louisiana State University, down the road, for our undergraduate studies.
 
A deep passion for perpetual learning was instilled by our parents at an early age.  Thus, my ultimate long term goal is to learn as much as possible in the fraction of time I've been granted here on earth as a conscious human being and to use that knowledge to better the earth as a whole.

Academics

I was one of a few (~10) classmates who attended Episcopal in Baton Rouge for all 12 years offered at the school (grades K-12).  Most of my graduating class entered later, in middle or high school, from feeder schools.  I attended undergraduate college about thirty minutes from my high school at Louisiana State University from 2011-2016 and graduated with a major in Industrial Construction Management and a minor in business.

At Episcopal, grades K-8 can be summed up as me being super academically competitive.  My goal was to be able to hold my test score, written garishly in red pen by the presiding middle school teacher, next to my classmates' and come out on top.  If mine wasn't the highest, it was certainly within the top 5th percentile.  It is notable to mention that this was done in a positive competitive manner.  I tended towards friendships with top academic performers, so the competition was always in great fun and good light.

As chemicals changed, so did my focus and interests.  At the beginning of high school, I discovered females.  The discovery of females spiked my interest in social interactions and the analysis of people in general.  More of my time and mental focus was spent creating and maintaining meaningful relationships with my peers from Episcopal and other schools in the area.  In turn, I started making some B's academically.  After considering the long term payoffs, I deemed acceptable the slight drops in academic performance in exchange for building my social skills.  At that time, my goal was to be accepted into Louisiana State University on full academic scholarship with a massive network of social connections and relationships.  I graduated with a 3.8 GPA and accomplished that goal.

Over the years, our parents brought my brother and I to tour major colleges across the United States (it had to be at least 20 - I'll attain a rough list during my next phone call home).  Even with all of this data and unlike all of my peers, I only applied to one school for my undergraduate; LSU.  I had a developed network of social connections at the school, full academic scholarship, dad went there, family support was a half-hour away, and brother was currently attending at the time of my application.  There was nowhere I would rather go.
 
I began my time at LSU as most people in my situation did and joined an on campus fraternity.  This experience was short lived.  Double majoring in Biology and Business was time consuming and pulled my focus away from fraternity events and interactions.  This, combined with my already large social network in the area, led me to part ways with the fraternity.  Having said that, it was a great group of guys and I fully support peoples' decisions to take part in these groups.  It certainly makes sense for a gal or fella from another geographic location and/or without a pre-constructed social network.

After two years of college, countless labs, and acing organic chemistry 1 and 2, my best friend and roommate walked in one day with some interesting news.  His dad worked at a construction company (we already knew this part) and he had finally asked him exactly what the company did.  It was fascinating listening to Michael discuss the details of what that company did; industrial electrical and instrumentation.  I had grown up not watching cartoons and movies, but religiously watching the Discovery and History channel.  The industrial world drew me in like a magnet.  After doing independent research on the opportunities and capital available in the industrial sector, I immediately changed my major to that of my roommate's - Construction Management.  LSU also happens to have one of the top C.M. programs in the country.  Since I had already taken most of the C.M. prerequisite classes (economics, accounting, etc.), I was only behind by one year rather than two.

During my senior year, the Construction Management department implemented "focus" courses to specialize students in industrial, commercial, or residential construction before graduation.  I was lucky enough to graduate in the first ever Industrial Construction Management class at LSU and with a minor in business.  I also graduated with an overall GPA of 3.5 and a Construction Management GPA of 3.8 - top of my class.
 
Work
Click the blue links to learn more about each experience.

During high school and early college, I worked as a technician at my dad's ophthalmology practice.  During my sophomore and junior year of college, I worked as a runner at two different law firms.  During my fourth year of college, I worked as an industrial electrician's helper.  During my fifth year of college, I worked as an industrial construction project estimator.  After graduation, I continued working as a project estimator for another two years.  At age 25, I moved to Georgia and helped manage a $100M industrial construction project as an on-site cost engineer.  After returning to Louisiana and spending time shadowing the legal department and project controls at headquarters, I moved to one of our district offices in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to manage multiple industrial projects in the vicinity and hone my team/office management skills.  After personally helping the Pittsburgh office grow exponentially, I moved to Ohio to manage one of the $20M industrial projects I had helped acquire as the Site Manager. Still to this day, this experience may be the most condensed career experience I've had. After requesting to return home to Baton Rouge, I was sent back our estimating department for three months before a Project Manager position opened up in our Telecommunications division.  I presently work as a Telecommunications Project Manager.   

*************The biggest takeaway that I currently have from my experiences is that I want to know a little (enough) about a lot of things to help bring specialists together in a productive fashion.****************