About
Hi, I’m David.
Former union bricklayer. Technology Director at a public safety nonprofit. Cybersecurity student who can’t stop tinkering with AI. Dad of three.
For ten years I was a union bricklayer. Hard, physical work, where you show up, build something, and at the end of the day you can see it standing there.
Then, in 2024, a serious motorcycle accident changed my direction.
The tech part actually started with video games. I always wanted to know how they were made, which got me learning Python. Then generative AI showed up and opened doors I didn’t even know existed. Suddenly the distance between “I have an idea” and “I built a working thing” got a lot shorter, and I’ve been experimenting with it ever since.
These days I’m the Technology Director at Under The Helmet Riders Foundation, an Information Systems intern at Metropolitan Family Services, and a cybersecurity student. I also keep a few projects of my own running.
And I’m a dad of three. Balancing family, school, an internship, nonprofit tech work and side projects mostly comes down to a good calendar. Some weeks the calendar wins. Most weeks the kids do.
I don’t know everything and won’t pretend to. I ask a lot of questions, and one habit carried over from the trade: check your work before somebody else does.
How I got here
How I got here
10 years
Union bricklayer
A decade in the trade, building things you can stand next to.
2024
A change of direction
A serious motorcycle accident changed where I was headed.
Curiosity
Video games to Python
Wanting to know how games were made got me writing Python.
Then
Generative AI
AI opened doors I didn’t even know existed, and I started building with it.
Now
Public safety tech, AI and security
Technology Director at UTH, Information Systems intern at Metropolitan Family Services, and finishing a cybersecurity degree.
Experience
Under The Helmet Riders Foundation
Current
Technology Director
I build and run the foundation’s technology: the public safety dashboard and the public website.
- Work with the foundation’s leadership, including Antaeus, on which datasets, features and public safety topics go into the dashboard.
- Handle the technical development: data work, maps, charts, the site and keeping it all running.
Metropolitan Family Services
Current
Information Systems Intern
Education
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU)
B.S. in Cybersecurity
About 80% complete
Minor in Generative AI
A newly introduced program at SNHU. I signed up as soon as it was available, because AI is the thing I can’t stop experimenting with.
AI lab
AI experimentation & security
This is where a lot of my curiosity goes. It’s hands-on learning and experimenting, not a job title or a research program.
What I’m exploring
- AI red teaming and adversarial prompting
- Prompt injection and instruction-following
- Local LLMs
- AI agents and autonomous workflows
- Model behavior and security boundaries
- Privacy-focused experimentation
- AI-assisted app development
- What emerging systems can and can’t do
A computer just for local models
64 GB of unified memory
I keep a separate computer dedicated to running AI models locally. It’s where I test models, try new tools, poke at how they behave and do privacy-focused experiments.
Why local? Privacy, control and flexibility. My experiments stay on hardware I control, I can swap models and tools whenever I want, and there’s room to break things without worrying about anyone else’s system. Local doesn’t make anything automatically private or secure, but it gives me more say in both.
How I build
Yes, I use AI. A lot.
I’d rather tell you that up front than have you wonder. Here’s how the work actually splits.
The ideas and planning
I decide what’s worth building, work out the scope with the people who will use it, and figure out what “done” looks like.
The implementation
AI assistants draft a lot of the code. I direct it, read it, change it, and push back when it’s wrong.
The testing
I click through everything, check numbers against the source data, and try to break things before anyone else can.
The learning
Every project teaches me something I didn’t know the week before, usually the hard way.
Outside of work
- Dad of three: the hardest job on this page
- Video games (still)
Want to see what I’m building, or talk about any of this?