My work as a researcher did not begin in a lab. It began in dissonance.
I graduated from Pepperdine University with degrees in Psychology and Mathematics, along with work/research experience in French, Computer Science, and Religion. I went on to earn a Master’s in Education (Instruction and Curriculum) at the University of San Diego while teaching middle school computer science, and I later entered the PhD program in Education Reform, Evaluation, and Policy at Claremont Graduate University.
Across law firms, web development roles, classrooms, podcasts, spiritual study, and entrepreneurship, I have consistently allowed curiosity to lead me. Over time, all of my questions converged into one:
How do we know what we know?
If we were confident in how we arrive at decisions, our confidence in the decisions themselves would rise. Much of overthinking is not uncertainty about the choice—it is uncertainty about the source of knowing. We are trained to privilege the mind: to rationalize, justify, and analyze. Rarely are we taught to account for the data coming from the gut, intuition, heart, or body.
My research seeks to give each dimension a legitimate voice.
You are not one-dimensional. You are multi-dimensional. And intellectual integrity requires exploring every aspect of that architecture.
In academic spaces, knowledge is grounded in empiricism and rationality. In creative spaces, knowledge emerges through intuition and cultivated skill. In spiritual spaces, knowledge is revealed. And in every space, the body carries its own data (perspiration, temperature shifts, tension, sensation, etc..) sharing knowledge before language can name it.
But what if these ways of knowing were not meant to compete?
What if they were designed to interact—each refining, challenging, and strengthening the others rather than fragmenting us?
I have lived at the intersection of all four—and I could not ignore the fracture lines between them.
My formal training sharpened my methodological rigor: qualitative/quantitative inquiry, theoretical framing, epistemology, and interdisciplinary systems analysis. My lived experience as a spiritualist complicated it. All knowledge is different expressions of the same underlying cognitive structure.
I completed 72 doctoral units in a year and a half. Then I burned out. The pandemic hit. My wedding was canceled with two days’ notice. Again, collapse.
Instead of forcing productivity, I turned inward. I studied energy. I deepened my spiritual life. I meditated. I examined epistemology, cognitive science, interdisciplinary theory, and the architecture of learning itself.
And a pattern emerged.
My research agenda emerged from this tension.
The Birth of the Ornelian Framework
Across all my pivots—law, genetics, philosophy, history, coding, education, spirituality—there was one throughline:
I was not confused.
I was structurally multidimensional.
Academic disciplines are not random. They are systematized expressions of dominant ways of knowing. Beneath them are four primary gateways:
- Soul
- Mind
- Body
- Spirit
These gateways interact to generate a mode of knowing.
That mode crystallizes into a life theme.
Over time, institutions formalize those themes into disciplines.
The Ornelian Framework maps this architecture.
It explains why polymaths feel fragmented in systems built for specialization.
It explains why multi-passionate business owners struggle with coherence.
It explains why traditional schooling often misunderstands other kinds of intelligence. Everyone is a genius!
What is publicly available right now is the first layer.
My research continues—into predictive modeling, interdisciplinary cognition, long-term potentiation, and the structural integration of multi-passionate scholars.
This is not branding.
It is research in motion.
Engage the Research
Why This Matters
My life looked nonlinear from the outside.
From a research perspective, it was data.
The Ornelian Framework is my attempt to formalize what I lived:
That multiplicity is not confusion.
That integration is possible.
That soul, mind, body, and spirit can operate as a unified cognitive system.
If you are here, you are likely not seeking information.
You are seeking structural coherence.
And this research is ongoing.
