 Instead of attending Juilliard School of Music, he went to the engineering school at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his degree in 1982.He began his amateur racing career while in high school while working as a systems programmer in Silicon Valley part-time to pay for his new hobby, racing automobiles.Winning at SCCA events, he worked as an instructor at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving after college.