About Me
I’m a development engineer who believes that infrastructure is more than the systems that move us; it’s the framework that shapes culture, belonging, and daily life. My work sits at the intersection of engineering, social impact, and design. I explore how technologies like renewable energy, housing, and transportation can strengthen the connections between people and place.
I came to this field through mechanical engineering, where I first learned to think in terms of forces, efficiencies, and equations. But I quickly became drawn to the human side of engineering: the ways infrastructure reflects values, distributes power, and tells us what a community prioritizes. At Rochester Institute of Technology, I worked on sustainable energy systems and helped design community-based projects, from off-grid solar dryers for farmers to 3D-printed housing for older residents facing gentrification. Those projects showed me that technology alone doesn’t create change; people do.
At UC Berkeley, where I’m completing my master’s in Development Engineering, I’ve continued to explore how technical rigor can coexist with community voice. I’ve worked with Engineers Without Borders-USA, producing climate adaptation data to help design resilient water and energy infrastructure, and at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, supporting career pathways for engineers and designers committed to social impact. Most recently, I designed a course at Navajo Technical University, Renewable Energy and the Navajo Nation, which blends solar energy engineering with ethical reflection and cultural relevance. That experience reinforced for me that expertise isn’t a credential, but a relationship built through dialogue, trust, and shared learning.
Across all of these projects, I’ve been motivated by a single question: How can infrastructure be designed not only to function, but to foster care, connection, and cultural continuity? I’m drawn to projects that ask engineers to think differently, to design for both efficiency and empathy, to measure success in terms of human experience as much as performance data.
Outside of work, I spend time reading, tinkering with whatever is lying around, working outdoors, or exploring the cities and environments around me and learning more about the communities that inhabit them.
Guiding Principles
How do we design infrastructure that does more than just move people or deliver resources? How can it also nurture community, culture, and belonging? Too often, engineering solutions are reduced to their technical efficiency, while the social fabric they influence goes unnoticed. Yet for me, the deeper meaning of development work lies in understanding how roads, water systems, or energy grids are not just physical structures but are also platforms for connection, equity, and shared life.
In facing this challenge, I have chosen to root my path as a Development Engineer in questions of relationship and context. I am motivated not only by technical possibility but by the chance to ask what kinds of cultures, communities, and values does this system enable? Whether in urban settings, where transit and public space shape culture, or in rural contexts, where access to basic resources defines daily rhythms, I see infrastructure as a mirror of collective values. Choosing to view engineering through this lens requires patience, humility, and a willingness to bridge theory with lived experience.
The outcome of this perspective has been a steady shift in how I understand my role. I no longer see myself only as a problem-solver, but rather as a participant in shaping futures where technology and culture are intertwined, where design choices foster resilience, and where communities can see themselves reflected in the systems around them. This approach doesn’t eliminate tensions between idealism and pragmatism, but it gives me a compass: to pursue equity, sustainability, and care as guiding values in every project I take on.
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