I'm a Springville, Utah native born and bred. My family is from Northeast Colorado, specifically a small town called Wray. My mom got work at Brigham Young University in the 80s and so she and my dad moved to Utah and that's where me and my brother were raised, starting things out as odd mans out being the only Catholic kids in our neighborhood and schools.

I was raised on Indiana Jones, Star Wars, cartoons, and comic books. I used to watch Last Crusade, and immediately put on my dad's leather jacket and a fishing hat and practice tumbling in the backyard for when I'd grow up to be Indiana Jones. That was my career plan until I read Calvin and Hobbes and decided I wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist. I stuck with that plan for a long time, but in the meantime my dad got my brother and I a video camera for Christmas. We made tons of short movies, evolving as we went from at first just making up junk before rolling, to writing scripts that were just ripping off jokes from Homestarrunner.com, to actually editing scenes together and adding music.

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By this time I had graduated from high school and was starting college at Brigham Young University. I was drawing cartoons for a local newspaper, starting my way towards the career goals I had set when I was nine, but I was frustrated because I didn't feel like I was being very funny. I thought I needed more panels to tell my jokes and stories. With that frustration, and being pushed by BYU to pick a major, I decided to pursue my interest in history and get a history teaching degree. I made the mistake  of taking a film analysis class just for the fun of it the semester before my student teaching was set to start. I absolutely loved it and was suddenly confronted with the fact that I never saw teaching as a career, and it was obvious that film was where I wanted to be. Acting decisively, I thought about it for a year and a half and flunked out of the teaching degree, as my heart was no longer in it, and got a history degree with no teaching certificate.

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I then left for Utah Valley University to pursue a degree in film. I had no idea what I wanted to do other than make movies, but found some talent in writing. I followed the writing track while getting set experience as a script supervisor, grip, assistant director, or any position they'd let me be, and eventually got so that I was writing stuff that I found I could produce. I graduated with two feature screenplays and fifteen shorts written and a month of sets scheduled. 

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Before I graduated, I began work as a researcher for the podcast "History That Doesn't Suck," produced locally in Utah. It's focused on providing history that is as academically rigorous as a PhD would expect, but entertaining for people of all backgrounds. I've continued working with Dr. Jackson, who created, hosts, and writes the show, and have moved up the line to the point where I am now the senior writer for the show. I write the first draft of our episodes, doing the research and writing for the whole episode before Dr. Jackson prepares the final version that audience's hear.

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Once I graduated and began looking for work, I was able to combine my background in education with my new degree in film and teach screenwriting for the Utah Film Center. I have taught well over 150 lessons to elementary, middle, and high schoolers throughout Utah, everywhere from one room schoolhouses in Hanksville to auditoriums in Salt Lake City. It's amazing how after teaching so many classes that every single one is still unique. 

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I continued working in education as my alma mater, UVU, asked me to come back and teach their beginning screenwriting course. I've now taught the class for five semesters and love helping to hone students' creativity into the world of film.

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I like small stories. The stories of our everyday lives that show the bigger worlds inside all of us. Sometimes those stories are funny, and sometimes they're terrifying, but in my experience its the moments when we read a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon and decide a career path for the coming ten years, or when a sentence written analyzing The Bicycle Thief proves to us that we're destined to get in the film industry. What I most want to do with my work is show people how important they are no matter where they come from or where they are, even if they're an odd man out.