The short version
I love the art of learning how to learn. Learning is what I do for fun, and so far that's 597 books. I'm a builder and use whatever tools are needed to solve problems, but I'm more interested in people than code. I use code to help people.
The longer story
I grew up in New York, raised by a single mother at borderline poverty levels. Her motto was simple: "Just because we're poor doesn't mean we have to look poor."
In high school I started an underground candy business to pay my way through tuition at Mount St. Michael Academy.
I started college as a designer. I had an eye for colors and shapes, and learned UX from Tumblr tutorials and Photoshop. After the 2008 crash, my family's situation demanded a more practical path, so I transferred into the business school at Fordham University, studying Information Systems and Marketing with a minor in Computer Science.
At Fordham I started the Digital Business Society to help students navigate the digital economy. I also used my spring & summer breaks to study in the library for 3 years, teaching myself how to code from YouTube tutorials and blogs.
Engineering
My first tech job was at Standard & Poor's during the Eurozone debt crisis, prototyping data visualizations that told the story of sovereign debt and the real estate investment trust market. S&P would eventually build a full data visualization department out of that work.
From there: Bluewolf on Salesforce consulting, American Express on the core team that rebuilt AmericanExpress.com, Lifion by ADP doing functional programming, and Google, where I worked on Google Docs and within the Maps organization.
I left Google in 2022, then spent three and a half years as a Senior Software Engineer at Truffle Security, working on security tooling.
Communities I've built
Nobo House
In 2018 I quit my job to found a Burning Man camp. What started as Camp No Boundaries with 37 people, 30 of them first-timers, grew into Nobo House: a 100-person international theme camp. I've been to every burn since 2016 and have led the camp since 2018.
Nobo House is a wellness camp: steam sauna, cold plunges, an outdoor gym, sound baths, a smoothie lounge, yoga, salsa, live music & community meals. Everyone contributes.
Running it taught me skills no engineering job could. Carpentry, electrical circuitry, plumbing, shade structures rated for 70 mph winds, and 700 gallons of water to manage in the desert. It also taught me that Nobo needs the collective action of many, not the heroics of a few.
Some problems are software shaped and others are human shaped, and the camp has both. Before we had a website and app, coordinating everyone took a lot of lead time and admin. I spent a year and a half building the Nobo app, and 2026 was its first season. There are limits to what software can fix. What it did was save time, so we could focus on more important areas: one-on-one time to get to know each other, helping new campers get up to speed, and checking in on anyone who was exhausted, sad or at risk of heat stroke.
Few things I've done have come close to using all my skills the way the burn has.
Personal Development Nerds
In 2015 a friend's breakup freed up a ticket to Iceland, which kicked off a chain of invitations that became a dinner series, then a mini-unconference, then Personal Development Nerds: a mutual-improvement community that grew past 2,000 members.
Through it I also ran a software engineering mastermind to help Black software engineers break into and advance in the industry.
/dev/color
I've facilitated for /dev/color, an organization supporting Black software engineers.
Reading
I started reading seriously to take my education into my own hands when school wasn't enough. So far that's 597 books, mostly psychology, philosophy, business, science, history and fiction. My notes and ratings for the ones I've reviewed are in the library.
My approach: read what you love so you can love to read. I favor Lindy books over trending bestsellers, and I seek out underrated picks and constructive three-star reviews over the noise of perfect scores.
Thinkers who've shaped me: Naval Ravikant, Cal Newport, Charlie Munger, Shane Parrish, Maria Popova, Alan Watts, Thomas Sowell, Tim Ferriss. The full list is on the influences page.
What drives me
I'm someone that's deeply trying to understand people, the way the world works, and the way that I work.
Early on I turned my insecurities, fears & neurodivergent traits into fuel for learning skills. I built habits around reading, fitness & writing, and I come back to all three every year. In 2016 that meant a 460-day writing streak on 750words.
The more multi-disciplinary you are, the more systems you need to stay grounded, or else your skills will just float away like balloons without a string.
The happier I am, the more curious I am. Who I am does and will change. What stays constant is the drive to keep learning.
I care about:
- Knowledge. Learning how to learn, the skill underneath the others.
- Culture. Building spaces & communities that help people help themselves.
- Freedom. Leading by investing in others, not by collecting authority.
Personality and working style
For those who care about frameworks: INTJ, Enneagram Type 5, and a Reflector in Human Design. I'm an ambivert who thrives in small groups and deep conversation. Novel experiences energize me; repetitive tasks and small talk drain me. I think abstractly, communicate cautiously, and decide on evidence and pattern recognition.
Each year I choose three words to guide my focus. The full timeline is on the 3 Words page.
What you'll find here
My book notes, notes, quotes, tools, bookmarks and essays.
Connect
Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn, or email me at message@juvoni.com. Send me your book recommendations. I'm always looking for underrated reads and forgotten classics.