Born: November 22, 1983
Height: 5’10″ Weight: 180lbs
Hometown: Salem, Oregon USA
Nickname: Berto

Professional Ice Skater?

Almost by accident, I fell in love with skating. Sophmore year in college, 19 years old, I was lured by a girlfriend and some peers into taking a 1 credit physical education course on figure skating. At first, I had a typical outlook on skating. Keeping an open mind and putting machismo aside, I quickly found myself taken by the sport. The Bill Collier Community Ice Arena offered me a job where I then learned the operations of an ice rink while honing my skills on the ice.

At the end of my college career I took a shot at performing and put out a demo video. Days after publishing the video, I had gone pro and went across the world to perform. It’s important to note that I did this without any sort of competitive career or a single completed skating test under my belt. All it took was a little passion and hard work. I am for the most part self-taught when it comes to a lot of things and skating is definitely one of those hobbies that I did not need the constant aide from anybody else. You can do it to! Just practice and have fun!

Ice Engineer?

When I worked at Bill Collier Community Ice Arena and Sun Valley Resort, I learned a great deal about ice maintenance. The construction of an ice rink, building ice, maintaining ice, removing ice and keeping related equipment and machinery running were all the jobs I had to master. My demo video features me driving the zamboni and there is no movie magic to it. That’s me, I am very much driving that machine and the video is an honest snapshot of my life during this time. I kept the ice and I put in my time watching from the side when I was wishing I could be right out there with the other skaters.

Software Engineer?

I attended Oregon Institute of Technology and was educated in the field of Software Engineering Technology. The most advanced project I completed was the development of an artificially intelligent path finding system for a real-time-strategy game engine. This was my junior project and I was in collaboration with two other students who were working on different parts of the engine. It rocked and we got very good marks for it. You can find out more about this work by reading my technical documentation of the technologies used.