Born and raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I graduated from Central Dauphin High School in 1985.  After 4 years in Army ROTC, I graduated from Lehigh University with a BS degree in Civil Engineering in May 1989, and was commissioned in the Air Defense Artillery.  I spent my first 8 years in the Army assigned to PATRIOT missile units, including deployments to Southwest Asia (SWA) for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm and two years in the Republic of Korea. 

My Army career took a right turn when in 1997 when I was selected to attend the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.  After earning a MS in Applied Mathematics (Operations Research) in 1999, I taught for three years in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, West Point.  I then became an Operations Research / Systems Analyst (ORSA), working as a Forces Structure Analyst, at Headquarters, Department of the Army, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-1 for two years. 

I was then fortunate enough to return to graduate school, completed a PhD in Management Science  and Finance in the Decision, Operations, and Information Technologies department, R.H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland.  I then put my studies into action as a Research Analyst in the Operations Research Center (ORCEN), Department of Systems Engineering, West Point, Director of the Center for Data Analysis and Statistics (CDAS) and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, West Point. and as Chief of Strategic Assessments for Multi-National Force - Iraq (MNF-I) in 2009.