I grew up in Miami, in an Orthodox Jewish family. When I was in kindergarten, I remember filling out a workbook about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Like many young children, I gravitated toward the career of one of my role models, my father, who was a certified public accountant at our family-owned company, Salver + Salver. As I continued through secondary school, my passion for accounting shifted to the arts, where I played the bass at the Miami Arts Charter School until I realized the artist lifestyle was not my calling. I fell in love with applied mathematics during my last two high school years in a Dual Enrollment program called School for Advanced Studies at Miami Dade College. I decided I wanted to pursue a civil engineering career and accepted an offer to study at the University of Maryland. However, I deferred my enrollment for a year and a half to study Judaics in Jerusalem, Israel, at Derech Ohr Somayach.