The Responsibility to Refine (and The Way by Which to Do So)

Control the Controllable.
Influence the Variables.

In many ways, this has been my mantra my entire life, though I couldn’t articulate it until I first heard those words.

I don’t come from a computer science background. Medicine has always been my passion. Yet here I am, honored to receive the AWS All Builders Welcome Grant. It’s 11:40 PM as I write this—the hour when reflection kicks in, when I find myself wondering: how did I get here?

I was born in Guatemala City in 1991. My family immigrated to the United States when I was three, and Massachusetts became home. From Red Sox victories to epic winter storms, Boston will always hold a special place in my heart.

My parents sacrificed everything to give me opportunities they never had. They made it possible for me to attend Boston Trinity Academy, a college preparatory school. After graduating in 2009, I attended Boston University. In 2012, I enlisted in the Army, went to Fort Benning for Infantry and Airborne School, then attended Special Forces Assessment and Selection at Fort Bragg. Two years later, I earned my Green Beret and became a Special Forces Medic.

In 2019, I found myself in the mountains of Afghanistan, where I was awarded a Bronze Star. After ten years of service, I received an Honorable Discharge in 2022.

August 2023 brought the greatest gift of my life: becoming a father.

In 2025, I published my book Beyond the Assessment , and on February 27, I founded Altivum Inc. 

So I return to the question: how did I get here? Thirty-three trips around the sun have taught me much, but the biggest lesson I've learned is how much more there is to learn. As a first-generation college student, service member, author, and now company founder, I’ve gained valuable insights. These experiences also revealed an important truth: building a better society requires continuous refinement, and experience brings with it the responsibility to contribute.

AI became the tool that allowed me to contribute. The coding barrier that once seemed insurmountable suddenly disappeared. But I wanted to build thoughtfully and intelligently. AWS became the platform that enabled me to do precisely that—the medium by which I could refine the world around me.

This is how Altivum was born. Altivum™ Inc. is a veteran-founded technology firm building intelligent, cloud-native architectures with AI at the core.

Altivum Logic™  helps veteran-owned small businesses migrate to the cloud and integrate AI.

What started as a vibe-coded app  on Amazon PartyRock has become VetROI™ , a platform built on the AWS cloud that helps veterans transition from military to civilian life using robust data and AI.

Finally, with Altivum Press I hope to advance AI literacy and education in the military and veteran community.

My passion for medicine still burns, though and, inspired by leaders like Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, my mission is to bring AI-powered robotics, edge computing devices, and true modernization to military medicine.

Everything I do comes back to those two lines:

Control the controllable.
Influence the variables.

AI is the tool and AWS, the cornerstone.
I look forward to building alongside the AWS community.