Michael is a software architect, leader, and engineer who is passionate about networks, infrastructure, and using technology to improve lives. He has spent his 20+ year career helping startups and charitable organizations build their core technologies and teams from the ground up.

Michael started his career as the first employee at Inveneo, a non-profit technology startup. There he designed, built, and installed wireless networks and zero-maintenance, solar-powered PCs for remote villages in East Africa. He then earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA with a focus on network protocols, concurrently joining internet-monitoring startup ThousandEyes (now part of networking giant Cisco) as their first employee. Ultimately taking on the role of VP of Engineering, Michael spent 7.5 years developing their core technologies and building a 30+ person engineering team. Today, after building technology and teams for startups rideOS (acquired by Gopuff) and Swarm (acquired by SpaceX), Michael is an independent technology consultant and CTO of Geocene, the world's leading experts in cookstove use monitoring.