About Me
I am a Portland, Oregon native and currently reside in the city of West Linn.
Growing Up in oregon
I grew up in the city of West Linn, Oregon, where I attended elementary through high school. I always had a strong interest in academics and travel while growing up. During my time in high school I developed a strong interest in the hard sciences, particularly in chemistry. Academics has always been something I’ve found myself excelling in. Travel was something I very much loved growing up. In high school, I visited China and Spain, and after my high school graduation I took a roadtrip throughout Western Europe, visiting England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Despite my orginal plans to study environmental engineeering after high school, I studied business administration at the University of Oregon.
College
I studied business administration at the University of Oregon where I concentrated in finance and minored in economics. My sophomore year was the year the coronavirus pandemic emerged, making for the following next two years a very interesting and unique period of my life. It was while I was in college that I discovered my personal and professional interests for finance and economics, especially in real estate as well as in blockchain and decentralized finance. With the help of a finance professor at the time, I launched a cryptocurrency fund with Oregon Blockchain Group which I led as president for a short stint of time. I also helped lead the university’s real estate investment group as its vice president during my senior year. The real estate group helped me build a foundation in understanding real estate finance and real estate markets. I also had the opportunity to gain experience in real estate financial modeling building pro formas, water falls models, and a variety of other models in excel. I also had the opportunity to utilize and gain experience in Argus Enterprise.
Hobbies & Interests
I love to spend my time outdoors in nature and, when circumstances allow, traveling abroad outside of our country. World travel has a very special place in my life. Some of my greatest memories are from my times abroad. Adventure is important to me, and I believe it is in that sense of adventure that as people we are able to grow and develop ourselves outside of our usual ways of domestic living. My belief is one cannot truly experience the journey of life without a regular adventure of some kind. I am also an avid reader (and to which I mention there is a lot that I read). As of late, I’ve enthralled myself in a wide array of literature pertaining to self-development/psychology. I am also fascinated with philosophy and economics and will indulge in works such as The Wealth of Nations or Leviathan (I have yet to finish both of those books as of writing). I also love hiking which is one of favorite activites. I am also very passionate about meditation and mindful living.
Lessons I’ve learned
I believe that some of the greatest lessons we learn are from our most challenging times. My sophomore year in college was the start of a very difficult time for me. Not only was it the year that the coronavirus broke out, but it was also the year I discovered my father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and my grandmother with Alzheimer’s. The following year I took a gap year with the coronavirus in full swing. It was during that gap year I spent some time with my grandfather while he passed away from cancer while in hospice. Learning to grow with grief has been tremendously difficut but has also shown me that there is a lot a person can learn from their agony and suffering. I’ve learned that in our modern day frantic and hurried world, it pays to slow down to the speed of life (that’s also the name of a book I’d recommend – Slowing Down to the Speed of Life by Joseph Bailey and Richard Carlson). Learning to enfranchise my own grief and validate my own difficulties and losses has been tremendously helpful. There is a lot of difficulty in dealing with the ambiguity of ongoing loss and grief, as well as with the variety of second and third order effects such losses have on relationships, lifestyle, identity, and wellbeing. I like to think that I’m emerging from my most trying times as a new and stronger person than I was before.