I was born, raised, and have remained in the great city of Houston, Texas. Growing up, if I wasn’t playing sports outside, I was likely inside watching one of our hometown teams — go Rockets! With both parents working in the energy industry, it didn’t take long for my career path to become clear once they noticed my interest in puzzles, problem solving, math, and science.
My introduction to process safety began before I ever joined Cognascents. While a student at Rice University, I took a process safety course taught by John Perez, a founding director of Cognascents. Among the many lessons from that class, one has stayed with me ever since: John’s belief that every strong process safety professional needs something that keeps them grounded in the work. For John, that grounding came from his experiences growing up in developing countries and from living through near misses at the facilities where he worked. For me, it wasn’t until I began my own career in process safety that I truly understood what he meant.
In May 2013, I was offered the opportunity to intern with Cognascents, eager to put what I was learning in the classroom to work in the real world. I graduated from Rice University in May 2014 with a B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a minor in Business, and joined Cognascents full-time that August. In March 2020, I became a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Texas.
Over the years, I’ve worked to become a well-rounded process safety expert. Most of my clients — across offshore platforms, onshore terminals, gas plants, LNG facilities, chemical facilities, and refineries — know me as a PHA Facilitator. I’ve led HAZOP/LOPAs, HAZIDs, Design Reviews, What-Ifs, Checklists, and Alarm Rationalizations on work ranging from small MOCs to large capital projects and facility-wide risk assessments. I’ve also supported clients both in the field and in the office, managing full-scale PSM program development efforts, including Safe Operating Limit (SOL) generation and implementation.
Outside of work, I married Courtney, a licensed R.N. and BMTCN, in 2019, and we’ve since grown our family with three children, born in 2022 and 2024. If you’re counting, we got to three with the blessing of twins to start our parenting off right.
Thinking back on John’s challenge from that process safety class at Rice, I’ve come to understand what keeps me dedicated to this work. My father was an operator. Two of my brothers-in-law are operators. I have cousins and uncles who were operators too. When I take on a client, I remind myself that I’m working on behalf of people like my own family — and I dedicate myself to getting them home safely. For me, process safety is personal.