Without mathematics my life would be considerably less interesting. I have worked on problems ranging from evaluating anti-submarine warfare tactics to forecasting cash inventory needs for a major check cashing company. I spent a summer in South Korea analyzing techniques for detecting North Korean invasion tunnels and another summer working for IBM developing statistical techniques for determining preferences of Internet website visitors.

Entering college, I was fascinated by virtually every subject. I ended up a mathematics major because of a 15 minute conversation. The chair of the mathematics department at the University of Florida, whose abstract algebra class I was taking, struck up a conversation with me one day after class about my career aspirations. His few minutes of guidance and encouragement literally changed my life.

I received my PhD in mathematics from the University of Miami in 1987. I had every intention of pursuing the standard academic career path. However, I was introduced to the captivating world of applying mathematics to help solve real-world problems during a job interview at an AMS-MAA Joint Mathematics Meeting. As a result of that interview, I accepted a position as an Associate for Daniel H. Wagner Associates, a mathematical consulting company. At Wagner, I worked on problems in anti-submarine warfare, acoustic modeling and optimal ship routing using mathematical techniques from optimal control, stochastic processes, game theory, search theory, and probability.