01 — Flowerwood Nursery / college years
Someone took a chance on me.
During spring and summer breaks in college, my uncle gave me an opportunity to work as a Budget Analyst at Flowerwood Nursery.
It was the first time I remember being given a task and a desired outcome, with room to figure out how to get from one to the other. My toolbox was pretty simple back then: Excel.
That's where the seed was planted. An Excel course later in college showed me how much more that tool could do than I'd originally imagined.
What stayed with me I liked the figuring-out part just as much as getting the answer.
01 / The beginning
A task.
An outcome.
was mine to figure out.
Flowerwood Nursery · College breaks
02 — Regions Bank
A specialty I didn't know I had.
At Regions, I started tracking my progress in an Excel workbook. Nothing fancy. Just a way to understand how I was doing and where I could improve.
My manager, Chad, noticed. He told me I could become “the Excel guy” and that having a specialty was something valuable.
It's funny how a short conversation can stick with you. Mine did. I started taking that interest a little more seriously.
“You could be the Excel guy.”— Chad, Regions Bank
02 / Finding a specialty
the Excel guy.”— Chad, Regions Bank
An illustrative workbook, not an actual work file.
03 — Collins Aerospace / starting in 2022
Then I learned I could build things.
At Collins Aerospace, I was still finding my way. Around that time, tools like ChatGPT started becoming widely available, and I spent a lot of time experimenting with language models.
One thing led to another. I used them to help teach myself VBA, then built an automation for an existing process involving SAP and Excel.
My manager liked it. That was a defining moment for me: I wasn't just using a tool someone else had built. I could learn to make something useful myself.
The shift Programming became a way to solve problems, not just a new skill to collect.
03 / A new way to work
Same systems. A different approach.
An existing workflow with repetitive work between two systems.
A practical automation built after teaching myself how to use VBA.
Conceptual process illustration; no internal systems or data shown.
04 — Austal USA / 2023–2026
This is where things got serious.
I joined Austal as an EVMS Analyst. The job exposed me to much larger systems, more complicated data, and processes with a lot of moving parts.
My ability to translate business needs into working solutions eventually led to an opportunity within Finance, reporting directly to the Deputy CFO. I worked on improving processes for Cost Accounting and supported workflows involving other functions, including Supply Chain Management and Programs.
The work I enjoyed most usually started with an unfamiliar process. I would learn how people actually used the systems, investigate what was happening behind the scenes, and work toward a better solution.
By then, I understood something about myself: the systems, problem-solving, and building were what I kept coming back to.
04 / Looking beneath the surface
The same curiosity, applied to more complex systems.
05 — Still in progress
I know the direction. Not the whole route.
I'm intentionally moving toward work in business systems, process improvement, and practical software. I want to understand problems and make things that help people work better.
But the interesting opportunities in my career haven't always been the ones I saw coming. I'm comfortable leaving room for that to happen again.
In the meantime, I'm still learning, experimenting, and finding new things worth figuring out.
05 / Still in progress
The next chapter
isn't written yet.
A direction, not a predetermined destination.
A conventional résumé download will be added when the public copy is finalized.