Botolan, Zambales
Every story has a starting point, and mine is Botolan, a coastal town in Zambales where community is measured in neighbors rather than notifications. Growing up here taught me that good work is often quiet: helping where help is needed, keeping your word, and understanding people before asking for their trust. Those lessons stayed with me long before I wrote my first line of code, and they still shape how I approach every project and every team I join.
Bucao Integrated School
My elementary years at Bucao Integrated School were where curiosity became a habit. I was the student who wanted to know how things worked, not just what the answer was. School taught me to listen, practice, and try again, simple lessons that later made complex problems feel less intimidating. Looking back, the foundation was never only academics. It was learning how to learn.
Panan National High School
Grade 9 changed everything. A Facebook community that modified applications, changing designs and experimenting with interfaces, showed me that software could be shaped by anyone willing to learn. I did not understand everything at first, but I loved it. That small window into programming became the moment I knew I wanted to spend my life building things with code.
Polytechnic College of Botolan
I chose the STEM strand at Polytechnic College of Botolan to stay close to the technology I had fallen in love with. Senior high school gave me structure: analytical subjects, problem-solving, and the discipline to keep going when concepts did not click immediately. It was a bridge year, still near home, but already moving toward the career I wanted.
PRMSU, Iba
I enrolled in Computer Science at President Ramon Magsaysay State University because I already knew what I wanted to do. I did not choose the course because it was practical. I chose it because programming felt like something I would love for a long time. In Iba, I built the fundamentals of algorithms, data structures, and systems, and began turning curiosity into craft.
College Achievements
College became a place to test what I could do under pressure. I placed first runner-up in a competitive programming challenge in 2023, then championed a six-hour front-end hackathon in 2024 and a SQL challenge in 2025. I graduated Cum Laude in July 2025 with Best in Computer Programming and Best Thesis awards. More than the titles, those years taught me to stay calm, keep learning, and deliver work I can stand behind.
Smart METRO, UP Diliman
My first professional role was with the Smart METRO project at the UP National Engineering Center. I arrived as a developer and left with a new vocabulary: geospatial data, maps, and the quiet precision of people who think in coordinates. Working alongside geodetic engineers taught me that good software begins with understanding the domain, not just the code. It was also where I discovered how much I enjoy making spatial data understandable to the people who need it.
Lungsod Solutions, UP Diliman
At Lungsod Solutions, I moved deeper into the full product cycle: planning, prototyping, user acceptance testing, development, and analytics. The work connected code to real decisions, turning raw data into dashboards that help local governments see their communities more clearly. That is the part of software I value most. Not just building something that runs, but building something that helps people understand, decide, and act.
A Kind of Hope
Scott Buckley