Career Path of a Cofounder at Pencil Energy

Yes, I started out as a musician. I am a classically trained vocalist and I also sang in choir in high school, which I hope to get back into. I was planning on becoming a professional vocalist.

I went to music school for a year, and halfway through, I decided the path wasn't good for me. I could see my future, and I didn't like it. I wasn't going to be a famous musician like Joshua Bell, so I would likely be gigging and doing things that weren't my passion.

So I left music school, went to community college, and took every introductory class I could. I fell in love with policy and transferred to UCLA as an undergraduate, majoring in political science.

During my community college days, I also worked part-time as a storage property manager. That was pretty informative. Working in service is a humbling experience, and I got a taste of that with some difficult customers. You learn quickly.

The main thing is developing interpersonal skills and understanding that people will sometimes treat you poorly. What matters is how you conduct yourself in those situations. I hope that provides good context for my transfer days.

When I went to UCLA, I interned at a polling firm, doing mainly proofing and administrative work. I did have some exposure to the polling analysts and people who conducted focus groups, which was interesting.

After graduation, I had some entrepreneurial ambitions that failed. Then I got a job with the state government working as a state auditor. This is where I developed my main skills.

I worked for the California state auditor based in Sacramento. You could call me a generalist. My main role was to evaluate how well state and local government programs operate. I was not a tax or financial person. My experience involved digging into documentation and the inner workings of agencies to understand what was truly happening. You have to follow the paper trail to figure out why things might be underperforming.

I did that for three and a half years, conducting audits on various subjects. These included immigration contracts with ICE and local law enforcement, which was emotionally difficult. I also audited school districts, county offices of education, and cities with poor financials.

However, audit is a narrow career path, and I could see my future. I didn't want to stay there forever, so I decided to expand my horizons and get my MBA. At first, I studied part-time while keeping my audit job.

In late 2021, I decided I would rather be a full-time MBA student than stay in Sacramento and miss out on the action in LA. So, I quit my job and moved back to LA, where I'm from, to become a full-time student and immerse myself.

Shortly thereafter, I connected more closely with one of my future co-founders. We decided together that the timing was good to spin out a company for our MBA capstone project. Most MBA programs have a research requirement or major project, which is your capstone. I'm mentioning this because that's what I'm doing upon graduation.

We've pivoted our company from the original idea, and now we're called Pencil Energy. You may have questions about that, so I won't go into it now. I am hopefully a more successful entrepreneur than I have been in the past. So, now it's back to May 2023 on my timeline.