Born upside down and feet first, I’ve always seen the world a little differently. I’ve been obsessed with outer space since I was little; to this day, I could talk for hours about the history of Soviet rocket engines and their influence upon the design of SpaceX’s raptor engines. I also possess a deep love for musical theater, and I've starred in over 25 regional, community, and school productions. (I love playing “the funny guy,” so it’s no wonder my favorite roles were Nostradamus in the first-ever amateur production of Something Rotten and The Cat in the Hat in Seussical the Musical twice!) Most recently, I’ve pursued improv through my school’s Comedy Sportz team, learning to take creative risks regardless of the potential for (high) personal embarrassment.

But my biggest passion of all is making movies. As a member of my high school’s Institute for Arts and Innovation pathway, I spend nearly twenty hours a week immersed in filmmaking—directing, writing, editing, and crewing on both others’ projects and my own. As well as being chosen to direct the school’s biennial full-length feature film, I’ve won multiple awards for The Last Liftoff, a short film in which my fascination with space and filmmaking collided. After five months, seventeen screenplay drafts, two twelve-hour shoot days, and one car stuck in the mud at midnight, I learned more about filmmaking—and myself—than I could have ever imagined.