based in seattle, wa.
I use my knowledge of technology, human behavior, and data to thoughtfully approach every creative project.
I develop creative marketing concepts and produce them for small application startups to Fortune 10 companies.
This is the story of how I got here.
2001 - 2007
Location: Gilbert, AZ.
My interest in production started here. At the time, a local youth pastor saw my interest and taught me how to use iMovie to edit a trip video. Being around the age of 13/14 and not having any income, I (successfully) begged my parents to replace the old family computer with an iMac. From there, using our family’s handheld DV camcorder, my brother (and creative collaborator) began making as many skate videos, short sketches, and other silly content you can imagine two young boys can accomplish in a developing suburb in the middle of a desert.
High school allowed me to locate and refine my skills using actual instruction. I took as many “digital photography” and “video production” classes as I could find – eventually landing me on the student team who ran the announcements. I helped troubleshoot various video technical issues, shoot and perform segments, and continue feeding my never-ending appetite for being a part of video production.
Thankfully, most of the content created during these years are lost within unmarked hard drives and DV tapes in storage containers.
This is a photo of E Germann Road taken in 2002 on my Sony 5MP camera. This is what it looks like today.
2007 - 2008
Location: Tucson, AZ
Attending the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ, I pursued a degree in Media Arts with a focus on producing. At the end of my freshman year, due to a regional restructure, I lost my coveted barista job at the only Starbucks near campus, forcing me to jump back into the job hunt. I spent that summer at three different jobs; being an office assistant at my father’s business, a cashier/floor clerk at a clothing retailer, and barista-ing at a local coffee shop. (If you can’t tell, I prefer to stay busy.) When the summer ended and school resumed, I saw an ad for a “marketing job” at a new startup being run by two alumni (Notehall, which sold to Chegg for ~$4M). This tasked me to act as a campus promoter for the site, which I did for the first semester until market adoption reached desired goals. From there, I located two new job opportunities; bar-backing at a local club from Thursday-Saturday, and a “marketing assistant” job at the Student Union Monday-Friday whenever I wasn’t in class.
This is a photo of the UofA Performing Arts Center I grabbed through the car window on my way into campus as a freshman
2008 - 2011
Eventually leaving the bar job, I devoted more time to my marketing job at the university and my media arts program. Going into my third year, my brother was now attending the same university. His path in high school was an even more successful version of mine; he made more high quality content pieces for his student announcement team. With this, and knowing the marketing department’s growing need for people with video experience, I got him an interview with the person in charge of that area. Our jobs began to intertwine more frequently. We would think up ideas in our off-time, and pitch them to the larger team during various department meetings. It was, what I would learn to realize, social media.
My marketing job evolved into creating and handling various social media accounts for university services our department worked with. As social media gained momentum, so did our marketing efforts with our content creation. With my degree program wrapping up and several student films completed, I should have been eager to get out into the real world and find jobs in the industry. However, I was still focused on riding this wave of newly open social channels where videos could be shared and watched. I found it to be a fascinating social explosion, and while discussing this with a few marketing colleagues, I was encouraged to look into graduate programs that would allow my curiosity to blossom into actual data.
Photo: That little corner was my office to write video scripts, manage social media, and bother the other two people who shared the space with me.
2011 - 2013
I applied and was accepted to the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences to study Communication with a focus on online behavior. I kept my job at the university, now promoted beyond my original position by two roles. I studied and worked full-time. These years are well documented in my resume but it’s worth noting that I became an on-screen personality to promote various university features and services. It was one of three series I wrote and produced with a team of students and full time staff.
Unfortunately, much of this content is available online.
All kidding aside, I’m incredibly proud of the work my team and I made. We won multiple local ADDYS, competing against actual creative agencies with real clients and professional production teams. We were flown all over the country to showcase our work at various conferences and other universities as an example of a student-born and led initiative that had previously unseen levels of professionalism.
I also poured as much of myself as I could into my graduate program. I designed multiple research experiments to help understand how and why social media was affecting our communication and information dissemination. Because of my expertise on the subject and actively working in the industry, I gave multiple guest lectures and interviews on the subject of social media from an academic perspective.
Photo: The marketing department. We won 10 ADDYS that night, 3 of which I wrote and produced.
If closing out a student-career at the university’s marketing department and graduating with a Master’s wasn’t enough of a serotonin rush – I was asked to help produce the university’s first stadium graduation commencement ceremony and to host it. It was an incredible honor and a memory I will never forget.
Photo: That’s me in the center, hosting the commencement pre-show to an audience of ~2000 people.
2013 and on
Feeling accomplished with that chapter of my life, I decided to look for a job that fit my skillset in the Seattle area – a location a fell in love with on a family trip a decade earlier. The only problem was, what I wanted to do and where my experience lined up didn’t match with any open jobs. I knew I needed to once again take initiative and get creative.
I located a short-term paid internship where the company was looking for content creators to work on various advertising and marketing videos. Somehow, I convinced them to instead turn the internship into a lump sum of money that they would give to an agency. Again, collaborating with my brother, we decided to form an agency, move to Seattle and work on this, thus creating Armory Pacific.
Over the course of several years, we found creative projects to work on with companies, non profits, and startups of all sizes. Most of this work can be viewed in my media and portfolio pages.
Armory Pacific closed up shop at the end of 2019.
Photo: a corner of Armory Pacific’s office in 2018
2020 and beyond
Photo: On top of the closed West Seattle Bridge, facing north toward downtown.
Currently looking for jobs in the creative industry.
The future is full of possibility, and despite the ongoing pandemic, I believe the marketing/advertising creative that will be generated in the next few years will require producers and writers to be even more nimble, flexible, and creative; the three things my entire career embodies. Let’s talk.