Tzvetan Tchoukalov (he/him)

I live in Atlanta. I love gardening, biking, walking, science fiction, and playing with my kids. I was born an only child in communist Bulgaria and emigrated with my parents when the boarders opened. We lived in Portugal for 4 years before coming to the US where I became a citizen in high school (thanks, green card lottery!). I volunteered for my church and lived in Hungary for 2 years during undergrad. I still speak broken Bulgarian and Hungarian, but forgot Portuguese. When my folks moved to Portugal we were homeless for a month at one point, but never slept on the streets because people let us into their homes. Providing opportunities for affordable housing and improving financial literacy is important to me partly because of my experiences growing up but also because I believe it's everyone's moral responsibility to care for people in this world, especially those who are marginalized, vulnerable, or in need. I like talking with people about science, economics, politics, religion, spirituality, and nature. I know nothing about pop culture and am a bad dancer. Working at PadSplit is as much personal as it is business.

I've been working as a software engineer/developer for about 10 years out of undergrad. I've specialized in distributed backend processing with a focus on data integrity, but mostly do full-stack web development day-to-day. I studied math and computers during my undergrad at Stanford. I aspire to build a sustainable micro-farming startup in the future, does anyone like eating bugs?