My Story

hey 👋 my name is ian, and i'm a software engineering undergrad at the university of waterloo. here's a very quick tl;dr of my life so far: • born in toronto, canada 🍁 • attended an accelerated gifted program from grade 4-12 at the academy for gifted children 🎓 • got involved in my high school community starting in grade 9, joining and leading clubs like DECA and student council 🎯 • joined a few non-profits in the community tackling youth mental health, homelessness, and student development 🤝 • founded a non-profit called opportunify, which was a platform connecting students with programs, scholarships, and internships 🚀 • won at deca internationals (icdc) in grade 10, for the first time in our school's history 🏆 • started our school's JOT and FBLA chapters (case competitions) in grade 11, and competed at the national and international levels for both 🌎 • launched floato - a drone photography and videography company - at 16, working to build a portfolio of work and clients 🚁 • realized i loved drone videography as a hobby but not as a commercial business so a scaled-down to rooftop inspections and honed in on my other interests 🎥 • joined ontario deca as 1 of 8 provincial officers, hosting events across the province for 15K+ students and raising over $150K to host our yearly competitions. working at such a high-impact and large scale was genuinely one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and altered my perspective on what i want to do with my life 💫 • went to my first in-person hackathon (hack the north 2022) and built a gesture-controlled drone. made some pretty awesome friends too <3 🛠️ • realized that i loved business but i wanted to pursue the intersection of finance and technology more so i pivoted all of my college applications to software engineering and computer science programs 💡 • applied to 23+ universities across canada and the us over the course of 4 months 📝 • made a handshake agreeement to go to a hackathon with a friend of a friend which ended up being my first hackathon win, kickstarted my swe career, and was the beginning ofa life-long friendship 🤝 • was awarded $420K+ in scholarships, including the schulich leader @ mcgill, national president's scholarship @ western, and national math scholarship @ uwaterloo 💰 • spent two months choosing between berkeley met, nyu stern, and uwaterloo cs/se, and ended up matriculating to uwaterloo se 🎓 • interned at sibli, a trading intelligence startup, the summer after high school. absolutely awesome mentorship and learned so much in so little time 📈 • tried co-founding a startup but it ultimately didn't work out so i decided to focus on my own personal projects and learnings 🌱 • started my first semester in waterloo, making many new friends and getting a taste of what university life is like 🎒 • joined the cybersecurity club as the president in 1A, working with a great team to build a community, host workshops, and recultivate an enthusiasm for cybersecurity at uwaterloo 🔒 • went to tons of hackathons (almost weekly or biweekly), meeting so many awesome people, and creating fun projects like: an ai clone of myself, an ai wearable for your memories, and co-working spaces in VR 🤖 • created a self-driving rc car that could deliver food from tim hortons to a first-year residence as part of the first-year software engineering capstone 🚗 • joined the uwaterloo blockchain club as the director of events during 1B, and hosted events like a hacker house at ethdenver, workshops at the uni with boba and pizza, and weekly co-working sessions at a nearby cafe ⛓️ • came back as an alumnus at deca provincials and internationals, continuing to mentor students and help them grow 🌟 • joined hack the north as a logistics organizer, organizing workshops and mentorship for 1000+ hackers 🎪 • interned at bloomberg in summer 2024, working on a novel semantic search framework, and fell in love with hiking all over again 🏔️ • started 2A at uwaterloo and helped host hack the north in september - best weekend of the semester by far 🎉 • returned for my second internship at sibli, working on financial data parsing algorithms 📊 • worked on cool side projects like axiom - a custom ide for formal proofs, and blocks - a smart contract compiler for starknet 💻 • starting my second internship at bloomberg on the asset and investment management compliace ai team in winter 2025 🚀