What

Soccer, without a gap, since childhood: competitive club and the California North Olympic Development Program; four years of high-school varsity at Mission San Jose; four years of club soccer at UC San Diego; the Imperial College London first team during the MSc year; and, from 2026, head coach of a 7th-grade team at Convent & Stuart Hall in San Francisco.

Why it mattered

It has decided things. London was chosen because it allowed frontier neurotech, first-team football, and living abroad at the same time — the first fork where curiosity and deliberate strategy pointed the same way.

And it isn’t recreation running alongside the neuroscience. Five years at a mental-health company make the case plainly: health is holistic, and physical practice, competition, and belonging to a team are not adjacent to the subject matter — they are the subject matter, practised daily rather than measured.

My role

Captain in the final year at Mission San Jose, and again at UC San Diego. Starter for the Imperial first team. Currently a head coach, which is the first time the responsibility runs the other direction.

One story fixes the priority order: perfect attendance across four years of high school, then the first-ever college class missed, to make club tryouts.

Outcome

Athlete of the Year at Mission San Jose, 2014. At UC San Diego the club team won the league and regionals and reached nationals for the first time in school history. At Imperial, a first-team tour to Malta and fixtures against universities around England. Coaching since 2026.