Before joining the US Navy, Brad played college sports: football at Morehead State University and rugby at Coastal Carolina University. He was in the US Navy from 2007-12 -- stationed in Charleston, SC 2008-10 and in Fujairah, UAE in 2011. After the Navy, he completed his undergrad at Ohio State University (in Economics) and was in Cape Town, South Africa in 2013 for an economic development internship. Brad then moved to Silicon Valley for grad school at SJSU (in Economics) and lived there from 2013-19. Along the way, he completed an online master's degree from the University of Illinois (in Computer Science). He previously worked for Picarro Inc. from 2015-23 as an engineer responsible for equipment sensitive to methane, helping utility companies (such as PG&E, CenterPoint, Italgas, Xcel, and others) to address their climate change impact.

As part of the NOAA Physical Science Laboratory (Data, Instrumentation, and Field Campaigns Division), Brad is a liaison between all research teams to understand their data holdings and needs. In cooperation with storage managers (NCEI, NCAR, Zenodo) he organizes and maintains metadata for all model and observational datasets. Brad is responsible for ensuring the lab’s data holdings adhere to Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse (FAIR) principles to allow for ease of use for both scientists and the general public.