My second season, on Team 8405, pushed me out of “builder mode” and into real leadership. I wasn’t just assembling hardware — I was identifying workflow bottlenecks, reorganizing build processes, and helping implement systems that made the entire team more efficient.

I stepped into roles that felt more like product development and operations management: evaluating design tradeoffs, optimizing cycle-time, and documenting builds so the team could onboard new members faster.
This season showed me the value of systems over solutions. A good robot wins matches; a good process wins seasons. That lesson has shaped how I approach entrepreneurship, engineering, and teamwork.