About

Growing up, I was always surrounded by music — playing tuba through high school, spending hours with headphones on. But things shifted when I got into electronic music. Listening to Avicii and deadmau5, I went from loving music to needing to understand how it was made. I was teaching swim lessons in middle school, and by 8th grade I’d saved up enough to buy Ableton Live 8 Suite. That was the turning point.

In high school, I started studying tuba with Tony Zilincik, Capital University’s tuba professor, who also taught composition. I’d bring in my electronic tracks for feedback alongside the composition work, and that kept pushing the production interest forward. Senior year, I discovered that Fort Hayes Career Center in Columbus had an audio production program — normally a two-year track starting junior year, but the instructor felt my self-taught skills were strong enough to jump in for the second year. I earned my Pro Tools certification and fell hard for the production process.

Fort Hayes was affiliated with Berklee City Music, a program that supports students getting into music schools. I applied to Berklee, went to Boston for the five-week summer program, auditioned, and received a full-tuition scholarship. I enrolled to major in Music Production & Engineering, then added Electronic Production & Design as a second major after my first year. Five years, eleven semesters, two degrees — all on scholarship.

After Berklee, the momentum stalled. COVID had reshaped the last stretch of school, and the networking channels that usually connect graduates to work weren’t there. I took a position as Live Sound & Event Production Manager at Hocking College, handling campus audio and managing facility improvements. It was solid work, but it wasn’t the long-term path.

I moved back to central Ohio, worked my way up to shift lead at Best Buy. I was still making music, producing an album for another artist and engineering local events, but I wasn’t building toward anything. I’d gotten comfortable, and I knew it.

What changed was my brother graduating from Full Sail in 2025. I talked to admissions on a whim. I had all the production skills from Berklee but no framework for turning them into a business. They pointed me toward the Entertainment Business master’s program, and it clicked immediately. I started in August 2025 and I’m graduating in July 2026.

Now I’m building toward what’s next: launching an artist development and production business, growing KILE as my own electronic music project, and DJing events across Central Florida. The production skills were always there — I just needed the business knowledge to put them to work.

I use AI as a core part of how I build and operate — not just for generating content, but as infrastructure. Working with Claude (Anthropic), I’ve built custom MCP servers that connect my task management, knowledge base, budgeting, and calendar into a single AI-integrated workflow. I’ve also built browser extensions, deployed Cloudflare Workers, and designed a knowledge management system that spans hundreds of interconnected notes.

This isn’t a side interest. It’s becoming central to how I think about artist development and production. The music industry is still figuring out how to work with AI. I’m already building the tools.