From my earliest days on Pea Ridge Road, my life has been a testament to resilience, relentless self-improvement, and an innate entrepreneurial drive, evolving from fundamental self-sufficiency to pioneering advancements in complex information systems.
A Foundation Forged in Farm Life
This journey began when my sister and I went to live with my grandparents in a rural, agricultural setting near Water Valley, Kentucky, where self-reliance was paramount. From the age of seven to eleven, I was significantly involved in building my new family home by hand with my paternal grandfather, learning foundational principles of using tools for their purpose and meticulous maintenance. This hands-on experience instilled a deep understanding of practical construction and resourcefulness.
Life on the farm meant constant labor. My family operated a small dairy with five to ten milk cows, a demanding daily chore until the late 1960s when small-scale dairying became economically unviable without industrial setups. To adapt, my family shifted to raising market hogs and growing various row crops. Additionally, a one-acre vegetable garden was maintained annually, with much of the produce canned or dry-stored for winter, demonstrating intensive labor and self-sufficiency. My personal responsibility for the cistern, which supplied potable water delivered by truck every month or two, further highlighted my family's resourcefulness. Though the newly built home initially lacked modern amenities, it gradually evolved with the addition of a well, a kitchen sink with a pump in 1970, and an indoor bathroom by 1972, all through my family's diligent efforts.
Beyond the family farm, I was encouraged to work for others, earning my own income from jobs like working in tobacco fields, hauling hay, and building fences. This early financial independence fostered a work-for-reward mindset. At age twelve, I launched my first business: selling a pig I received as a birthday present to buy a gas-powered push mower. I then started cutting lawns for churches and cemeteries, pushing that mower for miles on gravel roads to the point of wearing out two sets of wheels. This demonstrated exceptional early entrepreneurial drive and perseverance.
My early interest in electronics was sparked by my father's former repair shop. This passion was further ignited by my paternal uncle, who was taking an electronics course. At age eight or nine, I would secretly access my uncle's workspace, reading his books, watching instructional videos, and experimenting with breadboarding projects. This self-directed learning, complemented by reading a popular electronics magazine, provided a crucial technical foundation. My paternal grandmother also provided an early example of entrepreneurial spirit through her hobbies of growing award-winning flowers and raising and selling birds, shipping them to distant cities via "Railway Express".
Forging Discipline in the USMC
My practical skills and thirst for knowledge continued to shape my path through my high school years. In my senior year (1975-1976), I balanced studying Industrial Electricity at a vocational school with a full-time night job at a tobacco warehouse. Demonstrating my hands-on mechanical aptitude, I repaired a broken-down car to enable my commute. Despite aspirations to become an electronics engineer, financial barriers to college were significant. An attempt to secure an appointment to a Naval Academy, despite a strong academic test score, proved unsuccessful due to the intense competition.
A pivotal moment occurred when I accompanied a friend to meet a recruiter. Discovering that Marine Corps electronics schools emphasized "component-level repair with engineering-level math," aligning perfectly with my desire for in-depth technical training, I made the life-changing decision to join the U.S. Marine Corps Delayed Entry Program in November 1975, a choice influenced by my paternal grandfather's counsel.
After completing recruit training at Parris Island in September 1976, where I realized the mental fortitude required for military life, I was assigned to advanced electronics schools in Twentynine Palms, California. My cross-country journey to California, in a used car acquired from my father, was marked by an unexpected act of kindness from a radiator shop owner who repaired my vehicle for free, asking only for a promise to "help someone else in need someday". During my time in California, I excelled in my electronics training, advancing to specialized areas like aviation communications and cryptographic equipment repair. A decision to get a "USMC" tattoo on my left forearm, a common display of camaraderie, later unexpectedly disqualified me from highly desired embassy duty due to strict appearance regulations.
My first operational assignment was to the Tactical Air Command Center at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, a critical Cold War-era post involved in air defense and intercepting adversarial aircraft. This period included demanding readiness exercises and a memorable NATO cruise in 1978 to the Shetland Islands, where I transported communications equipment by sea.
In late 1978, I reenlisted for Advanced Tech School, strategically negotiating a bonus and a guaranteed promotion to Sergeant (E-5) upon meeting time-in-grade requirements. This tactical negotiation proved crucial later in my career. I excelled at the advanced school, graduating first in my class in March 1980. Assigned to a Marine Air Control Squadron unit in Quantico, Virginia, I quickly proved my leadership by inheriting a troubled electronics shop in "terrible administrative condition" and, with the help of my skilled technicians, turned it around to pass inspection within six months. The unit's training needs led to frequent deployments to Dam Neck, Virginia, providing valuable weekday off-time. In December 1981, I was promoted to Staff Sergeant (E-6), narrowly making the selection from the "youngest time in grade" group, a direct benefit of my earlier promotion timing.
However, this period was also marked by personal challenges, including a tense home life that led to separation from a partner in August 1982. To manage ongoing financial responsibilities, I took on a night job as a telephone solicitor. The birth of a son in September 1983, coupled with an impending unaccompanied overseas assignment, forced a significant career decision. A connection to a reserve officer led to an interview at Gould Defense Industries. Opting for stability and proximity to my new family, I decided to leave active duty in December 1983, transferring to the inactive reserve, and beginning a new civilian role as an engineering technician in an undersea sonar lab in Maryland.
My civilian career at Gould began with a challenging R&D project that was behind schedule, a task I "loved" due to its complexity. However, an unfulfilled promotion promise from a departing manager led to dissatisfaction. In a bold move in August 1984, I took two weeks of vacation, moved my family to Union City, Tennessee, and secured five job offers in five days. I accepted a position at Lowrance Sound and Communications, a small local company specializing in sound systems and radio communications installations. Missing the Marine Corps life and prestige, I joined an active Reserve unit at NAS Millington, Tennessee, in late 1984. In April 1985, a unique opportunity arose: my unit would take over airfield operations during a major radar system rehabilitation. Offered a three-year active duty contract, including radar school, I accepted, seeing a path back to leadership and continued career progression.
Pioneering Entrepreneurial Ventures
My return to active duty at NAS Millington in April 1985 provided the platform for significant entrepreneurial and technical pursuits. I identified a common problem in the unit: nobody knew how to leverage the newly acquired CP/M-based S-100 microcomputer. Seizing the initiative, I taught myself dBase II and built practical databases for tracking repair parts, maintenance, and work schedules, significantly improving squadron efficiency. This self-driven learning extended to my home life, where I acquired an IBM-compatible machine and a 2400 baud modem, connecting to early online bulletin board systems, which "skyrocketed" my software learning. I discovered and utilized the Clipper compiler, accelerating the performance of my applications.
A friend connected me with an individual who ran a small business machine company in the Memphis area, servicing local businesses. Recognizing a mutual benefit, I formed a partnership, installing Lantastic networks. This partnership led to a major achievement: Memphis's first Novell Network Certification, which expanded my client base from small businesses to corporations, demonstrating successful business growth and adaptation to emerging technologies.
Building on my experience with Clipper, I identified a widespread need among developers for tools to write better, faster database-driven software. Collaborating with a friend, I brainstormed and developed ClipCASE, a Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool for Clipper developers, eventually selling my share in late 1992 or early 1993. This venture, though I was disappointed by the subsequent acquisition of Clipper by a larger company, showcased my ability to identify market needs and create innovative solutions.
Still on continuous active duty as a reservist in the early 1990s, I officially took on the role of MAG Training Chief, but effectively managed all computer systems for the Marine Air Group at Millington. I designed, purchased, and installed a Novell server and network to connect all the disparate PCs and integrated it with the mainframe using a 3270 interface. Recognizing that the mainframe was often down during weekend training, I ingeniously built an application to queue jobs locally and populate mainframe data when the connection was restored. This innovation earned my Commanding Officer recognition and led to me being awarded a Navy Marine Corps Achievement Award. This period also saw me achieve a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Technology through distance learning in January 1995. I was also promoted to Master Sergeant (E-8) in 1994.
In late 1994, facing involuntary separation due to military base closures, I discovered a "little known clause" in the law protecting service members with significant active duty time. Through extensive advocacy to senior officers and politicians, I secured an extension, leading to a new assignment as a Reserve Liaison at a Recruit Depot in San Diego, California, in December 1994. Here, I again identified inefficiencies in paperwork and applied my database skills to automate processes, implementing an "enter once and print many" system. I ultimately left active duty in April 1997, completing over 20 years of service, followed by a medical hold until August 1998.
After military retirement, I returned to Union City, Tennessee, seeking to reconnect with family. After an initial job as an electronics maintenance technician, I secured a position in the IT department at a Baptist Hospital in late 1998. This role, though initially frustrating due to a "Microsoft centered, corporate nightmare" environment resistant to open source and Linux, proved to be life-changing. Driven by my long-standing adherence to the Free Software movement and interest in Linux, I began exploring open source solutions for healthcare. Identifying a void, I took the initiative to develop an open source practice management system I named "FreePM". Initially built with Python and PostgreSQL, I soon shifted to the Zope Content Management System and its Object Database, finding it better suited for complex data relations than traditional SQL structures. A collaboration with a former Marine and open source advocate from a software company further solidified FreePM's development.
FreePM gained significant attention after I published an article in an online Linux magazine, leading to a workshop in Toronto in November 1999. Out of this, I co-founded the "Open Source Healthcare Alliance" (OSHCA) with a collaborator, formalizing efforts to promote open source in healthcare. FreePM's visibility on a public software repository attracted an angel investor group from Miami. I left the hospital in early 2000 to pursue FreePM full-time. However, in early 2002, when investors pressured for premature deployment at a children's hospital, I refused to sign the agreement, prioritizing patient safety and my "allergy to litigation" over financial gain. This principled stand led to investors recalling promises and funds drying up, effectively ending my involvement with FreePM. I then took a job as an assistant manager at a local auto parts store, a practical step during a period of immense personal and professional upheaval. During this period, I also managed my independent consulting under an entity called Open Paradigms, LLC. I earned a Master of Science degree (with Merit) in Health Informatics through distance learning in June 2006.
The Quest for S3Model
My commitment to open source principles and a profound "allergy to litigation" critically shaped my next major venture. In 2009, a key figure in a prominent open health informatics organization publicly mused about changing the licensing for a foundational specification to a proprietary model. This directly conflicted with my deep-seated belief in open source. Already sensing a need to move beyond the existing framework due to perceived limitations, this event became a major catalyst.
In response, I and a research partner downloaded the existing open source assets, effectively "freezing" them under their current license. This act led to the birth of the "Multi-Level Health Information Modeling" (MLHIM) project in 2009. I immediately began making "wholesale changes" to the specifications, quickly developing a framework that was hardly recognizable compared to its origin. I consciously moved towards more robust and widely accepted serialization formats, choosing XML Schema (a W3C specification) despite having limited initial experience with its nuances. My unique approach to schema development, though rule-compliant, was initially unfamiliar to others, compelling me to master a new level of the XML Schema specification.
Based in Brazil from March 2008 as a visiting researcher at a federal university, I became a central figure in the local health informatics scene. I organized and led the "First Workshop on Open Source Health Informatics Projects" in Niterói in 2008, promoting my Python-based open source implementation (OSHIP) and fostering a new community of developers in Brazil. My expertise was recognized internationally, leading to collaborations on an NIH grant proposal to integrate genomic information into electronic health records using open models and an inference engine. I continually onboarded new developers and collaborators, providing detailed guidance on the complex technologies involved. I also engaged in high-level discussions regarding national-level governance for archetype certification and localization in Brazil, recognizing the policy complexities required for widespread adoption.
As MLHIM evolved, I continued to advocate for open, pragmatic solutions, often critiquing established standards organizations for their perceived lack of practical implementations and resistance to truly open approaches. My interactions with key figures in the open health informatics community, including those I had previously helped establish, highlighted ongoing debates about open source integrity and the challenges of scaling innovation within bureaucratic structures. Despite personal struggles, my intellectual engagement remained unwavering, constantly refining MLHIM's technical underpinnings and promoting its benefits.
Recognizing that the core semantic data problems extended beyond healthcare, I and my research partner decided to generalize my work, leading to the development of S3Model in 2017. S3Model, built on the learnings from MLHIM and previous experiences, was designed to be "completely cross-domain," offering a bottom-up modeling capability and leveraging off-the-shelf tools for data manipulation. Its underlying data model supports cross-domain information management, providing a foundation for sharable, syntactically valid, and semantic models.
The AI Revolution and Semantic Data Charter
After an accident in Brazil in 2019 and a period of personal reflection, I returned to the United States. The ongoing "quest for truth" in information science, addressing the fundamental challenge of turning data into knowledge, remained my driving force. For years, the primary obstacle had been clear: building a complete platform around S3Model required a full development team, a financial barrier I couldn't overcome through traditional funding approaches. The answer came from an unexpected source—the advent of AI coding agents.
The emergence of sophisticated AI coding assistants fundamentally solved my financing problem. I realized I no longer needed to hire and fund a full development team to build out the platform. AI agents could help me develop the complex tooling and infrastructure that S3Model required, allowing me to maintain the lean, bootstrapped approach that had characterized my entire career. This technological breakthrough removed the final barrier between my vision and its realization.
As I prepared to launch the platform, I recognized a critical branding challenge: the name "S3ModelTools" created potential confusion with Amazon's widely-known S3 data storage platform. This name recognition problem could hinder adoption and create unnecessary friction in the marketplace. After careful consideration, I rebranded the platform as the "Semantic Data Charter"—a name that better captured the vision of creating a universal charter for semantic data interoperability across all domains. However, I deliberately preserved the complete version history extending back to MLHIM, honoring the decades of evolution and the collaborative work that had brought the framework to this point. In 2024, I officially published SDC4, the fourth major version of this journey that began with my healthcare informatics work in 2009.
Today, I continue to apply my problem-solving mindset and extensive experience across multiple domains. I serve as chair of my city's Planning and Zoning Commission and actively participate in local political advocacy, while simultaneously building Axius SDC to solve one of enterprise technology's most expensive problems: the $3.1 trillion annually spent on data integration because traditional systems can't trust each other's data. Through the Semantic Data Charter, I'm democratizing access to semantic data infrastructure—enabling organizations worldwide to design data models in any language (Portuguese, French, Japanese, Arabic) while maintaining global interoperability. This language-agnostic approach unlocks 75% of the world's non-English markets, embodying the same principle of self-sufficiency and accessibility that defined my journey from rural Kentucky.
My life's trajectory, from a self-reliant farmboy building a home by hand to a globally recognized expert leveraging AI to build trust in data, exemplifies the enduring power of the American Dream—not just for individual success, but for democratizing access to sophisticated technology. The same foundational skills I learned from my grandfather—resourcefulness, persistence, self-directed learning, and an entrepreneurial spirit—now drive my mission to make semantic data infrastructure accessible to organizations that have been locked out by language barriers and prohibitive costs. My story is a testament to how these qualities, combined with an unwavering commitment to open principles and an adaptive mindset, can turn decades of complex problems into meaningful solutions that build trust in data, one standard at a time, for enterprises across every continent and culture.