I am a U.S. Army veteran of the Second Gulf War. I served as a Signals Intelligence Analyst working in conjunction with the National Security Agency in Texas and South Korea. I left the Army in 2015, and after nearly two years of working as a Satellite Installation Technician with AT&T, I decided to return to university to pursue higher education. First, I earned an associate's degree in communications from Victor Valley College. I graduated in 2018 and then transferred to California State University, Long Beach, pursuing a Bachelor's in Journalism and a minor in Spanish, graduating in the spring of 2021. While working for the student newspaper, The Daily Forty-Niner, I won 3 first-place photo awards from different California college media associations. 

After working in the industry I now am pursuing a Master of Journalism at UC Berkeley with an concentration in Photojournalism. I have worked as a Photo Editor for the Signal Tribune Newspaper and have done freelance still and drone photography for The Markup, SF Gate, AfroLA News, The Long Beach Post, The Oaklandside, CBS Evening News, The City of Long Beach, HBO, BET and documentary films and book covers.