My identity is built from a multitude of experiences both personal and professional. I was a refugee from Vietnam though I am ethnically Cantonese. I attended one of the lowest ranked high schools in Portland, OR, but somehow got into the University of California at Berkeley, where I subsequently struggled academically. After graduating, I returned home and worked for an HVAC company, climbing through plenums of large manufacturing facilities completing as-builts. I also spent months converting aging blueprints to CAD.After a year or so, I found myself at Portland State University where I completed a Masters; I studied the performance of aluminum softball bats. However, the results were incriminating to the funding company and my research was banned from publication for three years. As a consolation prize my advisor got me into the PhD program at the University of California at Davis. While I was presenting my research at kinematic conferences in Poland and Solvenia I realized I wanted to do something else with more immediate impact. At about the same time, circa 2006, I read about Governor Schwarzenegger’s Million Solar Roofs initiative and the rise of companies like Powerlight, SunEdison, and BP Solar. Coincidentally, I met someone in town with a solar start-up called Blue Oak Energy. I was employee number three. We engineered some of the biggest, most complex projects of the day. We grew to become a developer, an EPC, and an asset manager. I was an engineer, then an engineering manager, then did sales and origination. I watched this small company of three grow to over 60 employees. We were acquired, then sold, there were casualties, we re-built. Here I am in 2024 starting a new chapter at TRC with an awesome team that's been together for nearly two decades! Let’s see what the next decade brings.