I’m a born and raised Auroran, an Aurora Public Schools history teacher, and a progressive Democrat, and I am running for HD36 to ensure our future works for all of us in Colorado.
Family
I was raised by my two parents-- my dad was a foreman at a meat packing company for 35 years before retiring and my mom has worked various office jobs to this day. They raised me in an Aurora where a couple with high school diplomas could work 40-hour weeks and own their own home at age 20 and 27. They raised my older sister in that first 5 years before they were able to buy their second home and had me. They worked hard while maintaining the time to attend our year-round sporting events and being home for us before and after school.
My parents taught us how important it was to help the people in your community. I distinctly remember some of those bad Colorado winters when my dad would pull the car over and have us get out and push the various cars stuck in the snow. Those early memories shaped who my sister and I would grow up to be and the lifestyle we expected to be able to achieve as adults.
Education
I attended Aurora Public Schools, going to Iowa Elementary, Mrachek and Aurora Hills Middle Schools, and Gateway High School, playing football, basketball, rugby, and wrestling. Though I was an honors student, sports were my main focus. I was the captain of the football and rugby teams and played rugby in college. I took those leadership roles seriously and learned then that, as a leader, you have to lead by example.
After college at UNC I became a teacher and have been in education for 12 years; eight at Hinkley High School. This work is where I’ve learned how deeply interconnected issues such as education, housing, worker protection, and criminal justice are.
Career
As a teacher in APS, I learned quickly that I could not meet the needs of my students, my profession, or even myself from just the inside of my classroom. The housing market was rising and APS had back-to-back pay freezes. I heavily considered leaving Aurora because my salary could not keep up with the cost of living. I took my leadership skills to the Aurora Education Association, serving on the Board of Directors and serving on the political committee where I focused on helping to get leaders elected to the school board who cared about these issues.
Since that time, we had multiple years in a row of pay increases which allowed me to go down the path of affording my dream home with my wife right by my job. This work solidified the impact that a few hard-working leaders could have on our community. This is when I took my advocacy upstream to the city level. I was a highly educated individual from two middle-class parents and I was almost squeezed out. My students weren’t in the position to win that same fight that educators were slowly winning.
Politics
I have been involved in politics since college when I was inspired by President Obama’s first primary run as well as Bernie Sanders’ first Senate run in 2008. This was the first time that I believed the progressive values I had were actually possible to accomplish. This was one of the first steps that sent me down the path of organizing activists in college, becoming a history teacher, becoming a union leader and organizer, working on school board, city council, and state-level campaigns, and running for office myself.
After years of work in politics, I know that the only place to work on the intersections of education justice, housing justice, economic justice, criminal justice, environmental justice, immigration justice, and all the other issues our community cares about, is to change state-level policies.
