Building
I am a licensed civil engineer and general contractor with a passion for building. Obsessed from a young age, I spent most of my childhood constructing Legos and helping my dad renovate the house. At 17, a high school teacher helped me get an internship at Turner Construction and thus started my career working on high-rises, stadiums, and other large structures. After school at the University of Southern California, I worked as an engineer for a firm called Simpson Gumpertz and Hegar designing building enclosures and investigating building failures. I then moved to a company called RAD Urban and joined a team designing and building multifamily modular apartments and high-rises in Oakland. I eventually built myself a van and ventured out on the road for a few years to climb whilst pondering perhaps too much, where to take my life. An interest in minimalistic living and desire to provide more housing to the world pushed me to want to create more affordable housing options in mountain towns. With that long term vision, I co-founded a van conversion company, Truckee Van Co. as an entrepreneurial experiment. I currently work for myself designing and building homes on a path to build more minimalistic forms of housing. Below are some of the recent projects I’ve worked on.
Truckee Van Co.
I started Truckee Van Co. with my friend Mats Allan as a means to learn how to start and operate a business. It turned out to be quite stressful yet successful as we built and sold 6 vans over an 8 month period.
First Van Build
With the help of numerous friends, I designed and built my first van over the summer of 2017. This space was my home for nearly 3 years.
United Sierra Snow Removal (USSR)
The U was added at a later point for comedic purposes and fits well to describe this hilarious venture that came about from the excessive Sierra snow fall in 2023. At our brief but fruitful peak, we had 2 crews and 10 workers shoveling snow from roofs for this pop-up hustle that gets an honorable mention here.
Current Work
The bulk of my work focus from June 2023 to present has been dedicated to designing and building a ground up custom home and ADU, made of concrete with a ground source heat pump and in slab hydronic heating and cooling … Call it training for the tiny home concept described below.
Tiny Home Community Concept
I have a desire to build tiny home communities in mountain towns and I am actively working to make that happen. My vision is laid out in
the podcast below and hopefully there will be more to come on this soon.