I am an entrepreneur at heart with a background in technology and a strong understanding of finance. I have a genuine passion for the creativity, enthusiasm and sense of personal accountability inherent in startup culture. I believe in hard work and strong relationships as the cornerstones of success in business, as in life. Strategic and operational planning, team building, project management, user interface design and verbal/written communication are personal strengths.After a stint at an Austin telecom venture, I moved to New York in 2000 to join DealMaven, a software startup catering to the financial services sector. There my partners and I (narrowly) survived the bursting dot-com bubble, stuck together through our fair share of scrapes, and eventually had the good fortune to acquire a roster of Wall Street clients including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley before ultimately selling to FactSet Research Systems in 2008. I spent the next five years at FactSet before striking out on an entrepreneurial road once more. I am currently involved in several nascent businesses in an investing or advisory capacity.Throughout my business career, I've nurtured a passion for history through reading and attendance of lectures held by various historical societies. In particular, I enjoy exploring the impacts of emerging technologies throughout history and uses of technology to improve education today. I will be matriculating at Columbia University in the fall of 2014 in a masters program in International & World History offered in conjunction with the London School of Economics.