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. He merged those values for himself while working in Los Angeles, California on film and television projects after studying 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 career highlights have been telling stories and creating images with the National Parks, PBS and National Geographic. For most of his projects, Brent practiced participant storytelling, a process of placing himself in the field to do 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 and authentic storytelling experience. One of the most rewarding examples of this was working with teams of people from different backgrounds coming together to serve their community as a fellow AmeriCorps member.