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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been breaking away from conversation to find out what car I heard driving by.  When trying to recall how my professional journey in the automotive world started, there are a few memories that come to mind.

I had my first hands-on experience with cars in my high-school automotive technology elective. Picture the shop foreman of a local dealership facilitating a class. Aside from curriculum required quizzes and student level ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) competency tests, we were essentially let loose in a shop with a myriad of donated vehicles and top-notch tools at our disposal. I distinctly remember pulling the head on a Ford Explorer, only to be surprised when told to reassemble it- I hadn’t kept track of a single bolt in the process (that was not my style). I was the sort of student that would have scored straight A’s in math- if the curriculum tracked “the competency with which the student can achieve REM sleep”. I could not give less of a shit. Auto Tech, however, was my incubator. I was the top student in the class, coasting through ASE (the standard for automotive technicians) testing with relative ease.

In 2015, I was 18 years old when I joined Tesla as a Product Specialist. I played a role in introducing the electric vehicle and its accompanying lifestyle to the public. Aside from working with a company as revolutionary as Tesla (in 2015), this was an opportunity to meet car enthusiasts of many different levels. I was thrown into the deep end of the automotive industry, competing against the likes of BMW, Audi, etc, and interfacing with people that didn’t care to have me there. You can imagine the sort of conversation I had with the Maserati Ghibli owner that parked next to the Model S P90D company car at the local Cars and Coffee. During my tenure at the Tesla, I was surrounded by like-minded automotive enthusiasts; people that came alive at the sound of an AMG V8, yet understood the EV and its place in society. We set the standard for EV culture on the East Coast, and our workplace culture rapidly influenced Tesla’s growth- on pace with California.