I was born into a Jewish family in 1977 in Miami, Florida. My parents, Richard and Judith, were both from eastern Pennsylvania, although they did not meet until well after both their families moved to South Florida. My mother's family hails from the Lancaster area, and they moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1958, while my father's family came from the Allentown area and moved to Miami in 1955. I still have many relatives living in the Washington-Baltimore-Wilmington-Philadelphia area, and I try to visit whenever I have the chance.

After dropping out of high school in Fort Lauderdale, I obtained my GED and moved to Minnesota, where I lived with my uncle Richard and aunt Dawn in St. Louis Park, a beautiful suburb west of Minneapolis. I absolutely love the Mid-West and the people who live there, and I hope to one day move to either the Chicago or Minneapolis areas. It was while living in Minneapolis that I started working for a JCPenney department store, a job I would hold for nearly nine more years.

After about a year in Minneapolis, I returned to Fort Lauderdale to live with my parents and sister. I continued working for JCPenney, as they were quite a wonderful company then. At the beginning of 1999, I finally started work on an associate's degree at Broward Community College.

In May of 2001, I took a leave of absence from JCPenney to complete an internship program at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. There I met lots of great people from all over the world. Disney is a great company, but sadly, they did not completely explain to their future interns exactly what the program was about. I have been a life-long fan of all things Disney, especially of Walt Disney World, and no matter how tough the company makes things on its rank and file, I will always cherish and believe in the dream of Walter Elias Disney. He and James Cash Penney were two of the shining beacons of American business, and I salute their memories.

I returned to Fort Lauderdale, JCPenney, and Broward Community College in January of 2002, and completed my Associate of Arts in August of the same year. I then transferred to Florida Atlantic University to complete my Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems, which I did in August of 2004, graduating Magna Cum Laude. I am a member of Phi Theta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Golden Key International, and Beta Gamma Sigma honors societies.

Having realized early in 2004 that JCPenney was planning to eliminate my position, I decided to work on a master's degree as soon as I was done with my bachelor's. Unfortunately, I was unable to wait long enough for JCPenney to actually offer the severance package, and left the company in July 2004. My colleagues eventually informed me that the packages were offered in September.

After my father Richard passed away in June of 2004, I moved back to Orlando in August of the same year, where I started my work towards a Masters of Sciences in Management Information Systems at the University of Central Florida. I also work for the MIS department at the university as a Graduate Research Assistant where I, along with three other GRAs, assist a professor with a section that can have anywhere between 800 and 1200 students enrolled.

I am looking to complete an internship during the summer semester of 2005, while also taking classes and working as a GRA. As long as everything stays on track, I should graduate in December of 2005, after which time I will start work in either application development or database design. My professional goal is to become he Chief Information Officer of a medium-sized company. I eventually hope to retire before the age of 65, with a home in Florida, and a home in the mid-west.