Daniel Monzon’s career spans a broad range of professional experiences–for example, he started his business painting, advertising, marketing, and selling shoes during his sophomore year of high school which helped give him the entrepreneurial skills to be successful in business. He also worked on the YMCA sports staff as a basketball referee earning the admiration and respect of members and staff. Then as a first-year student at the University of Florida became a supervisor technician at the O’Connell Center while also learning computer language coding in python.

Developed an outstanding work ethic beginning in high school by managing a tremendous workload of ap classes, and community college classes, all while holding three jobs. All Senior year of high school obtained a 5.0 GPA while working at Publix, YMCA, and Tropical Smoothie. Used free time to frequent the YMCA gym in the early mornings at 5 am playing basketball and lifting free weights.

While working at the O’Connell Center his duties involved setting up power and audio equipment for dozens of events, as well as mixed audio during all sporting events at the Center (i.e., Basketball, Volleyball, Gymnastics, and others.). Led crews while building stages for events, interacting with road crews during touring shows, and assisting with load-ins and load-outs. On top of this, he has completed all the required certification classes to be proficient in audio as well as other technical skills needed for operations. Operations skills earned consisted of driving and operating vehicles such as forklifts, vans, and box trucks, and driving to different venues to set up, operate, and strike PA equipment for a variety of clients, performing routine maintenance on technical equipment, while making scheduled meetings with an assigned mentor to evaluate progression within the division.

Daniel discovered his artistic side in HS working as a designer and painter of shoes which then enabled him to showcase this passion through the business he started also profiting from the resulting creative and talented artwork. Daniel developed a high standard of customer satisfaction sometimes spending up to nine-teen hours working on a single project making sure the customer was getting exactly what they wanted ensuring 100% satisfaction and zero returns. Daniel also found creative ways to overcome short deadlines meeting customer demands as well as making sure each buyer felt as though they got exactly what they paid for.

Acceptance into the school of engineering at the University of Florida is a source of enormous pride for Daniel, especially given all the demanding work put in to get there during the years leading up to matriculating in 2022. Having a love for math and science led him to a Computer Engineering major and a minor in Engineering Innovation. Accomplishments have come fast as Daniel has already learned the computer coding language python alongside developing the skills needed to create artifacts developed from 3-D printing. Not only did Daniel code a recent project, but also built the required hardware design and model to create a bike lock, with a punch code that locks and unlocks the device.

Daniel will be finishing his first year at the University of Florida which has led him to become heavily invested and inspired to continue learning to become a leader in the field of Computer Engineering while also taking advantage of offerings in the Engineering Innovation program. Coming from a family of nine and being the second oldest, taught Daniel the values of patience, hyper-efficiency, focus, and effective communication skills all while at an early age. He developed a near obsession to learn all about coding as a result in part of looking at his dad’s work as a Senior Enterprise Systems Engineer. One good thing to come out of the pandemic is his ability to work at home 100% of the time allowing Daniel to get a taste of real-world knowledge in the Information Technology space. Daniel’s future goals continue to grow and will include learning multiple coding languages other than just python while also gaining expertise on the Operating system side with Linux (.i.e. RedHat, Ubuntu, and other distros) systems gaining the skills to better monetize work experience creating more personal projects that are built on top of the raspberry-pi platform for example.