A Bit About Me

I grew up with three siblings in a small city south of Boston. I started playing trombone in fourth grade and studying Mandarin in sixth. At the time, they were just two things I enjoyed, but they ended up shaping a lot of my life.

In 2017, the summer before my senior year of high school, I went to China on a two-week, all-expenses-paid trip through the Confucius Institute. It was my first time abroad. After years of studying Mandarin in a classroom, I loved being somewhere I could actually use it and see things I had learned about firsthand.

I was lucky enough to go again in 2018. That time, I met Sia.

Eight years and several configurations of long-distance later, we’re living together in Brooklyn and getting married this October. In between, quite a lot happened.

At Boston University, I studied bass trombone performance. I had wanted to study Chinese too, but combining degrees from two different colleges was complicated, especially with the demands of a music program. It took until my junior year to officially add the second degree. In 2022, I graduated with degrees in Music Performance and Chinese Language and Literature.

At that point, Sia was in New York, finishing her master’s in bilingual education at Columbia. I moved to Tianjin, China, for a two-year master’s in Orchestral Studies at The Tianjin Juilliard School.

The music program was a big reason to go, but there was a personal reason too. I wanted to meet Sia’s family, see where she grew up, and understand her culture better. I wanted to spend time immersed in the place she came from, beyond what I could learn through studying Mandarin or hearing her describe it. Even though going meant another stretch of long-distance, getting to know that part of her life mattered to me.

Moving to China in the middle of the pandemic was an experience of its own. I stayed for two years, finished my degree, and did some amazing traveling before returning to the United States in 2024. After a summer with my parents, I moved in with Sia in Brooklyn. She had finished her degree too and was already teaching.

While I was in school, I had imagined working as a freelance trombonist after graduation. Once I got to Brooklyn, though, finding an immediate source of income took priority.

My first job was substitute teaching at a network of private schools. It felt bizarre to be standing in a fourth-grade classroom again after everything I had spent the previous several years doing. I took a long-term assignment, but when the lead teacher left halfway through the semester and I found myself leading the class as a substitute, I knew it was time to move on. The long commute and early mornings didn’t help.

Next came a medical assistant job at a primary care office five minutes from home. The work was entirely in Chinese. Before long, I was taking vitals, doing EKGs, preparing vaccines for doctors, and speaking with patients in Mandarin.

I never would have predicted that one.

Eventually, I returned to substitute teaching, this time in New York City public schools. The pay was better, the hours were shorter, and I could sometimes work at Sia’s school, just a short walk from our apartment.

It was a useful source of flexible income, but I found the uncertainty tiring. I wanted something I could work on over time, and I missed being around the arts.

I had done some arts administration work during graduate school, so I started applying for internships. That led to an unpaid operations internship with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, followed by a summer camp job at Harmony Program. Within a week of starting there, I was offered a full-time position as a Program Assistant.

About a year after graduating, I had my first salaried job with benefits.

I enjoyed being back in the arts. As time went on, my work became more technical, and I found that I liked identifying inefficient processes and figuring out how to improve them. My responsibilities grew, but I couldn’t see a clear path forward within the organization. I started wondering what it would be like to use those skills somewhere outside the arts.

In January 2026, I joined Verse Medical as an Operations Associate. That’s where I am now.

Some of the work is repetitive, and there are plenty of processes that could be better. I’m learning that’s probably true of most companies. But I’ve appreciated having managers who are open to ideas and give us opportunities to work on projects beyond our daily responsibilities. I’m enjoying that side of the job and seeing where it might lead.

Outside work, a lot of what I enjoy is simply getting to share everyday life with Sia after so many years apart. We cook, exercise, run errands, and explore the city together. We’ve started bouldering, snowboard in the winter, sometimes paint at home, and go to performances and events. We’ve also taken a couple of trips to China in the past year.

It’s a pretty wonderful setup.

Since moving to Brooklyn, I’ve also gotten back into magic more seriously. There are photos of me as a kid pulling a stuffed rabbit out of a top hat, so this interest goes back a while.

I started getting paid to perform in college, then paused during the pandemic and my time in China. In late 2025, I started taking bookings again and performed at a handful of holiday events around New York.

Around the same time, I began spending more time at Tannen’s Magic. Eventually, I asked whether there was a local group of magicians who got together. I was living in New York City, so surely I could find some people to practice with.

As it happened, a magician named Quinn had just started a group chat for exactly that.

Quinn and I have become good friends, and I’ve met several other friends through the group. We get together regularly, sometimes heading to Washington Square Park to perform. A few of us also meet online to talk through our goals and help each other out. Having people to share this with has been a big part of getting back into it, and I’m working on building magic into a more consistent side gig.

Trombone has been harder to return to. I still love listening to orchestral music, but practicing alone in the basement can feel lonely, especially when there are so many other things competing for my attention. I’d like to play music with other people again, possibly in a community orchestra. I still study Mandarin too, though less consistently than I used to.

That’s something I’m figuring out: how to make room for the things I care about.

I’ve tried dividing my time carefully so I could do a little of everything each day. I’ve also gone the other way and convinced myself I needed to pick one focus and cut things out. Neither approach has really lasted.

These days, I’m more comfortable letting my interests come and go in waves. Sometimes I put a lot of energy into one thing, then find myself drawn back to something else. I still have goals, but I’m less concerned with making every interest lead somewhere.

A lot of the time, I do these things because I enjoy them, and I’m getting better at letting that be enough.

That’s a bit about me, at least for now. This site is a place to write about what I’m doing and learning.