Under my guise as president of our high school's Junior Rotary International club, we were able to transform an unused concrete courtyard into a reading area.  An expired design, the high school smoker's courtyard had no place in the future and was a void of space for decades.  Today the courtyard is accessed from the cafeteria and at its center a beautiful thriving Japanese maple tree.  This was my first introduction to design, permitting and construction management.  It was also my first introduction to the power of philanthropy and collaboration as the local Rotary Club supported and guided us thru the whole process.

In college I became Penn State's first architecture student member of the Visual Arts Student Alliance.  Eventually becoming president, I expanded our biggest annual event, Arts Crawl, a student showcase of the arts subcampus.  Ten years ago the architecture school at Penn State was located in the engineering subcampus.  A change of curriculum and philosophy landed the new Stuckeman Family Building for architecture and landscape architecture in the center of the arts subcampus.  Before I helped the Stuckeman Building open its doors to this annual event not much was done to socially integrate the arts with architecture. 

Today I work as a project manager for Albert Taus & Associates, a small efficiency firm in Northeast Philadelphia where I correspond with clients, draft, render, survey and research and carry out permitting in various jurisdictions in over a dozen states including New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

During the weekends I work as a social media marketing engineer for Provenance Architecturals, an architectural salvage company in Philadelphia.  We design furniture, bars and restaurants using salvaged materials from our warehouse, which is also open to the public.  It is a labor of love to be surrounded by such rich materials; marble, granite, quarter-sawn oak, stained glass, doors, and vintage furniture and hardware.

It is difficult to stand on ones two feet in the city of Brotherly Love, so I do freelance work as well.  My current side project is a bar for a doctor's home on Long Island.  A VERY relaxed timeline and a modest budget is allowing me to learn a lot as I progress.