Our Team

As a precocious 6 year old, Nick moved to America with his family of four. His mom and dad luckily found jobs relatively quickly after moving and they became a working class family trying to achieve the American dream of giving a better life to their children. After about two years of living in a small two-bedroom apartment in Rowland Heights, the family was able to buy a house in the neighboring town of Diamond Bar, where Nick lived and grew up in.

Nick always liked school, which was fortunately due to the many great teachers in his life; Mrs Hope, Mr Starzynski, Ms Hewitt, Mr Desmond, Sra Buccola, with apologies to those I did not list here. The school district Nick was in had a great music program and so concert band, and then marching band became Nick’s core extracurricular activity. Performing on a football field in the drumline with the rest of the band and getting through Advanced Placement classes with that cohort fostered a great love of camaraderie in Nick.

Because he earned a National Merit Scholarship from the PSATs, Nick was able to attend the University of Southern California on a half-ride scholarship from 2001-2005 where he graduated with a B.S. in Computer Engineering with a minor in Economics. Nick enrolled in graduate school half-heartedly after graduation both because he really did not know what he wanted to do after graduation and also because he was encouraged to by his parents. When the United States Patent and Trademark Office offered Nick a job in 2007, he left graduate school early to start work as a patent examiner.

Although it was not his first career choice the patent office proved to be an ideal first employer for Nick. The workforce at the office was diverse and multicultural, pay raises were based on a performance schedule not office politics, and hours were flexible. Nick got to know the city of Washington D.C. during his time there and he even went to President Obama’s first inauguration. One of the most unique things at the patent office was the remote work program, which had already begun by the time Nick started working at the office.

By 2014 said remote work program was quite extensive and it allowed examiners to live anywhere in the continental United States without having to report back to the Alexandria, VA office. Taking advantage of the robust remote work program, Nick moved to Brooklyn, NY in 2014, finding a one-bedroom in a Polish family’s home in the neighborhood of Greenpoint. Later that year Nick achieved the title of Primary Patent Examiner, which enabled him to examine a patent application from beginning to end without having to get supervisor approval for some written actions. That meant having complete understanding of section 35 of the United States Code, which governed patent law in the country, and how to apply said law to daily examination practice. Besides learning how to read, analyze, and apply federal laws, the patent office gave Nick the appreciation that a functioning government required the daily participation of good actors within the governmental workforce. Without patent examiners and the rest of the patent office making fair decisions, the way of life that people are accustomed to would quickly change. That truth is magnified in certain sectors of the federal government, as most of us have certainly felt in recent years.

Although Brooklyn and New York City at large offered many reasons to stay, Nick felt that the pace of life was starting to wear on him; and so when an opportunity to work remotely in Hawaii came up, Nick made the leap to O’ahu in 2019. Continuing the family tradition of having the good luck to land on one’s feet in a new land, Nick found a home in the neighborhood of Kaimuki. With its walkability, balance between town hustle and country charm, and convenient location to most of the island, Kaimuki was about as perfect a landing spot as Nick could have hoped for.

And then the pandemic happened. After the initial shock and panic subsided, Nick settled into a quiet life of examining patents (which kept going full time due to the remote nature of the work), watching the relative horrors of the rest of the world, and hiking the many trails on the island.

When society mostly opened up again Nick started taking flight lessons. His reasons for doing so were probably because he felt that he had reached a plateau in patent examining and needed something that could feed his sense of accomplishment. Earning a private pilot license was quite the milestone for Nick; he learned a new skill, another dimension of responsibility, and found a local community, all while having fun.

A major life event at the beginning of 2023 pushed Nick to seriously consider how he was going spend the rest of his life. Although the patent office was a good place to work, different administrations taking over executive decisions every four years hindered real progress at the office, ironically. What had been the #1 place to work in the federal government in the mid 2010’s slid into a mediocre middle by 2023. Pay stagnated due to congressional inaction and the large budget of the office was squandered on superficial contracts instead of rewarding the heart of the office for keeping things running almost perfectly during the pandemic. Additionally, being a patent examiner was not Nick’s true calling even though he was quite good at it. So he put together an exit strategy from the office and formally separated from federal service in Spring 2024.