Jesse Martinez was born and raised in Santa Fe, NM and joined the NDI New Mexico family in 1999 through the in-school program. From there, he joined the SWAT and Celebration teams where he had opportunities to perform for countless audiences. Jesse began training in many different dance techniques through summer programs and after school classes and enjoyed dancing and applying NDI’s lessons to better himself in school and all aspects of his life. He went on to join NDI New Mexico’s newly created Company XCel where he had the opportunity to perform with his friends in Washington D.C. for the First Lady, as well as collaboration events in New York City. In between classes, he helped digitize video footage and catalog media for the Merrill Brockway Performing Arts Library, which helped steer him into his career with computers. He had found a passion for tap dance and was given opportunities to teach tap classes for NDI’s After-School Programs. Upon high school graduation, Jesse continued to teach tap in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque, as well as to teach for the NDI New Mexico advanced programs.
Jesse earned his B.S. in Computer Science at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 2012. He worked in various Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) student programs while in college, where he was exposed to and found a passion for high performance computing (HPC) and high-speed networking (HSN). Following graduation, Jesse joined LANL’s HPC Networking Team as an HPC network administrator and now serves as its subject matter expert and team leader, managing the network infrastructure for all of the HPC supercomputers. He has presented his work on high-speed network monitoring and administration at various technical conferences and continues to mentor students and new hires in the HPC and networking world.
Jesse still enjoys spending time in the tap studio, and with his significant other and dog doing outdoor activities, including hiking and camping, and he is a big trekkie at heart! He thanks NDI New Mexico and his family and friends for all their support, opportunities, and life lessons that helped him become who he is today!