Background

I grew up in southern New Hampshire, an avid video game and sports enjoyer. My parents gave me every opportunity to try different sports, and I played soccer, hockey, lacrosse, and baseball. After not making my middle school soccer team, I joined the cross country team instead — mostly to stay active and spend time with friends. I came in third overall in my first race, and that was enough to hook me on competitive running.

I went to Pinkerton Academy, a large New Hampshire high school with around 3,000 students. The cross country team was highly competitive, with high expectations set by the coaches and captains to live up to the program’s history. I thrived in that environment — the bar for what was acceptable at practice, at a race, and in the classroom was set high, and the team felt like family. Being part of that program for four years exposed me to a range of leadership styles and taught me how differently they landed on different people.

In the classroom, math was the subject I understood best, and — like a lot of kids — I wanted to build video games. I’d never coded before, but in my sophomore year I took a Visual Basic class and liked it immediately: the problem solving, the near-instant feedback on whether something was right or wrong, and how creative the range of solutions to any one problem could be. My teacher offered extra credit for building and demoing games, and I spent hours on the couch with my parents writing Hangman and then Minesweeper. Watching the game come together and overcoming all the bugs I had to work through was what convinced me this was the career I wanted — not just because I liked games, but because I loved the process.