The grandson of an Indiana farmer and son of a first-generation college graduate, Brent was raised to work hard with his body and hands, value an honest day’s work, and stay intellectually curious and engaged with the world around him. For over two decades, he merged those values for himself while working in the Los Angeles, California film and television industries. He studied cinema and television arts and sciences at Columbia College Chicago as a Presidential and National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences full tuition leadership scholar, an honor he did not take for granted, and tried to uphold to the best of his abilities a mission to make the world a better place through film, television and documentaries. Some highlights have been telling stories and creating images for the National Park Service, PBS and National Geographic. For most of his projects, Brent practiced participant storytelling, a process of placing himself in the field of doing the work about a specific subject matter in order to learn it, gain insight to its challenges and potential solutions so that he could make a film, television special, book or documentary about it, believing that a “boots on the ground and hands in the dirt” approach led to a more wholistic outcome. One of the most rewarding examples of this was working with teams of people to serve his community as an AmeriCorps member.