About Donnie

I have a varied background. I have worked as a mathematical researcher, a high school teacher, a basketball coach, and a software engineer. The journey to get to this place was a long one.

My formal education is in math; I have a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in math from San Diego State University. I also discontinued my Doctorate in math at Arizona State University. My research areas included arithmetic and algebraic geometry, number theory, and commutative algebra. These areas have applications to cryptography, communications, machine learning, and theoretical physics. I have a few publications, and I continue dabbling in mathematics as my software career progresses.

The majority of graduate students in math earn a livable wage by teaching classes for the college they are attending. That is exactly how I got into education. I started teaching math in the first year of my Master's program at San Diego State in 2008. In all, I have taught at two four-year universities, two two-year colleges, and one high school. I am no longer teaching professionally, but I plan to return to it at some point. Impacting young people's lives is one of the most rewarding experiences I have had.

During my education, I found programming and enjoyed it a lot. So much so, that I changed careers and am now a Software Engineer for a remote startup. I started learning different languages and building software in my spare time. The best way to learn a new language or technology is to jump in head-first and build something. I enjoy working in Go, Python, and Rust, and I have tried to build something interesting with each language. You can check out my past projects page to get more information. I still do some work on the side with my business, and am always interested in building new things and learning new frameworks. If you have something interesting you would like to talk about, feel free to contact me.

While I was teaching at St. Mary's I also had the opportunity to coach basketball. I started as a volunteer assistant coach for the varsity team. I enjoyed it tremendously, and was given the opportunity to be a head coach at the lower levels. I has been extremely rewarding to be involved in the young men's growth on an off of the court. You can ready more about my efforts and coaching philosophy here.