My road in life has taken me all over.
Grew up “dirt poor” in Alabama, but luckily, he earned a scholarship to a very prestigious private high school that set him up for a successful college experience.
Originally, he worked in engineering; he owned his own company up until 9/11, when the stock market crash drove his company into the ground.
He had to start his career path over again, and the only job he could get was working as a TSA screener at the airport.
Clients he’d previously worked with would come through the airport; they were shocked to see him working as a screener, and treated him like he’d had a fall from grace.
He says that feeding off of something painful or discomforting with give you the fire you need to keep going; his experiences as a screener motivated him to work his way out of that position.
Within six months, he’d been promoted to a position at TSA headquarters; while there, he developed an interoperability for technology systems at the 2004 Super Bowl.
But after developing that majorly successful system, he actually felt like he had to fight to prove himself even harder, so he went back to school to get a master’s in business administration.
He’s since held prominent positions in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and worked closely with former president Barack Obama to encourage cyberthreat information sharing.
Keep following my journey