I was born and raised in a small beach town in New Jersey. I attended college in Pennsylvania to play football and transferred to Castleton State College in Vermont. After working in finance for almost 10 years in New York City, I decided to resign and attend trade school for welding. I went to Palm Beach State College in South Florida to become a certified welder. Upon graduation, I completed an American Welding Society (AWS) 6G pipe welding certificate. After welding school, I was hired by Ingalls Shipbuilding. There I helped build a few different classes of ships for the Navy and Department of Defense. It was an amazing experience. I spent 5 years as a first-class journeyman level welder. I was x-ray certified on many types of metal in all welding positions. The last year and a half there, I was a welding foreman leading a crew of about 15–25 welders. I am excited to be entering my first year as a welding teacher here at Sentinel High School. I very much look forward to teaching students the many aspects of welding, and the many career paths that it can open up for students. Here at Sentinel I am working toward building a program where students can leave high school with the skills needed to enter the workforce if they so choose. In class, we will learn to use welding and hand tools to go through all the welding positions for groove welds and fillet welds using all processes. This includes stick welding, MIG, TIG, and flux-cored dual shield welding. Students will also learn about general workplace safety, how to use a wide variety of tools, how to use a plasma-cutter, and oxy-fuel cutting. I am basing the curriculum off of most college level welding programs.