With 25 years of deep experience across the public and private sector, I am eager to leverage my expertise in technical instruction, systems engineering, information security, digital forensics, and secure communications beyond the typical job sectors.
As our global society shifts into deeper division and inequity, I am re-focusing my skill set to support activists, organizers, and protesters who advocate for social justice for LGBTQIA+ and People of the Global Majority (PoGM). I founded the Institute for Secure Activism (ISA) in 2022 to support this effort.
In addition to my work with the ISA, I am also a Principal Advisor with leading digital privacy firm Ridgeline International, as well as the director of Ridgeline’s Signature Validation Lab. The Lab examines the digital privacy protections offered by commercial tools, providing a ‘digital mirror’ to examine our own patterns as we move through the online and physical worlds.
My focused interest in technology began through research of virtual reality techniques in the Alice system as an engineering undergraduate at the University of Virginia, and later as an employee of Carnegie Mellon’s Stage3 research group. I then shifted into software development and systems engineering for the next decade, earning my Masters in Operations Research from George Mason University. An unexpected career change led me into 10 years of support to US government counterterrorism operations as a tactical digital forensic collection and targeting specialist. My work extended across many areas of the Global South including northern Africa, the Levant, and Southwest Asia.
Currently, I live in the small town of Lovettsville, Virginia where, in my occasional spare time, I enjoy building and flying drones, 3D printing, home automation, and improving the homestead I share with my extended chosen family, our hordes of children, and an ever-changing menagerie of small fowl and mammals.