BIO
Roman Jazmin was born in Angeles City, Philippines in 1969. He was born to two parents, his father being a U.S Air Force military sergeant, and grew up as the third son out of a family of eight siblings. He attended part of grade school in Okinawa, and then attended the rest of grade school and part of junior high in the Philippines. His family then moved to the United States, to Victorville, California, where he completed his junior high and high school education. Following high school graduation, he attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, and pursued a career in computer science. However, in 1993, he dropped out of college, and moved to South Korea to teach English. He met his wife and married in 2000, and had his daughter in 2003. During this time, he attended an online college, American College of Computers and Information Systems (ACCIS), and graduated with a degree in computer science in 2004. Following graduation, two months later, he and his family moved to Los Angeles, United States. However, for his wife to more easily pursue a LVN to RN Bridge program, he and his family moved to Houston. From 2016-2019, he attended seminary to get his master’s in divinity at Southwestern Reformed Seminary, and was ordained as a pastor. Currently, he works as a Remote Full Stack Engineer for Booz Allen Hamilton, is one of three lay pastors at Houston CMI, and resides in Pearland with his wife. In this interview, Roman Jazmin discusses his early life with a military family, his academic and religious interests/discipline as a child, his journey in deciding computer science as a major, working in computer science during the emergence of the Internet, his advice for the upcoming computer science workforce, teaching English in South Korea and his experience of culture shock, his experience in the Navy Reserve, his involvement in Houston CMI, his daughter and her relationship to her heritage, his observations of the Filipino community in America, and his own takes on his ethnic identity.