The short version.
I am an engineering student at NC State, minoring in business administration. Before college I worked front of house at a Chick-fil-A and kept watching the same part fail, so I designed a replacement, had it CNC manufactured, and started selling it.
That turned into Charlie's Innovations, which I ran as founding president from 2024 to 2026. It went from one product to three and reached ten operators. It also taught me the half of engineering that does not happen in CAD: pitching to people who did not ask for your idea, pricing it, and finding out what survives a full shift.
What I want next is automation, specifically the mechanical side of fulfillment and material handling. I have not worked in it professionally yet, so I am working toward it in the open. I am designing an adaptive dispensing system and writing about where the economics of fulfillment point.
Charlie's Innovations · Harrisburg, NC
Founded and scaled a hardware startup for quick-service restaurants. One product to three, ten operators, sales cycle run end to end.
Diamond In The Rough · Mecklenburg, NC
Packing, quality control, and daily warehouse operations for a small business.
Chick-fil-A · Charlotte, NC
High-volume location averaging 250+ transactions a shift. This is where the Quick-Clip problem found me.
B.S. Mechanical Engineering · Minor in Business Administration
Engineering Statics · Differential Equations · Probability & Statistics for Engineers · Physics for Engineers I & II
Dassault Systèmes
Autodesk
- SolidWorks
- AutoCAD
- Autodesk Inventor
- Onshape
- 3D printing
- Soldering
- Slicer software
- Digital calipers
- Anemometer
- DC power supply
- Claude
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
- ElevenLabs
- Integrating AI into software
VEX Robotics
Led a team through the VEX design process and qualified for the World Championships, representing two schools and the state of North Carolina.
Society of Entrepreneurs, NC State
Regular sessions with student founders and guest speakers, trading feedback on early-stage product ideas.
“Automation Today and the Future”, on Medium
Compared robotic-arm picking, A-frame dispensing, and cube storage, and argued dispensing scales cheaper, with replenishment as the next bottleneck.
Off the clock: pickleball a few times a week with the NC State club, landscape photography, and DIY audio builds.