personal site — caden ice

Whether you think you can
or you can't, you're right.

now — AI strategist & QA engineer at Zeal IT Consultants · building Almura for students · cars, drones, shipping software

01 — a little
about me

I'm Caden Ice — a Business Computer Information Systems student at the University of North Texas, headed toward product ownership, project management, and Agile leadership. Right now I'm building Almura, a tool that helps students turn scattered conversations into relationships they actually keep.

Underneath the product is a belief I keep circling back to: depth beats volume — in the people you know, the work you make, and the way you make it. At Zeal IT Consultants I'm an AI strategist and QA engineer; after hours I'm shipping software, wrenching on cars, or flying drones. I made this site to share the things I care about, and explain who I am.

02 — the story so far

hobbies / cars, bikes, drones & tech

Cars, bikes, drones, and code — anything I can build, tune, and control.

None of this is really about speed. It's about being hands-on — building something, dialing it in, and knowing exactly how it behaves because I set it up that way. A car on the dyno, a bike on a backroad, a drone in the air, or code on a screen: I'm chasing the same thing every time — control and precision, earned by understanding every part.

01 — cars

the truck

the corvette (planned)

the wrx (traded)

in the garage

testing & comparing

I test everything. A Draggy GPS meter rides along for 0–60s, quarter-miles, and roll races — I'd rather line two cars up and compare real numbers than argue over spec sheets. A few runs, with times:

02 — motorcycles

the scout

past / rode

2016 Indian Scout 60

A low, blacked-out cruiser with just enough torque to be honest. A bike asks for a different kind of attention than a car — you can't be half-present on two wheels, and I liked what that did to my head.

03 — drones

Flying is the newest thing I've gotten obsessed with — part photography, part reflexes, part learning to trust a machine I'm running from the ground. Here's some of what I've shot:

off the clock

on the road

professional

The narrative version, not a list of jobs.

I work where AI strategy meets engineering — building automations and weaving AI models into a consulting firm's workflows one week, running tests and shipping the next. I care most about the part where a rough idea becomes something that actually holds up in someone's hands.

Where I'm headed: product ownership, project management, and Agile leadership, working close to real users on problems that reward patience. The ambition isn't scale for its own sake, but to build things deep enough that people keep them.

résumé

One page, kept current. View it in the browser or take a copy with you.

view résumé download ↓

experience

education

certifications

skills

outcomes — what actually got made

currently connect on linkedin ↗

growth — a thinking space

What I take in, and what it moves.

I'm a lover of learning, and going stale isn't an option. I've come to believe your mental growth deserves the same care as your health — or anything else you'd never let slide — and that nothing worthwhile comes easy. What follows is a record of what's shaped how I think: the beliefs I keep returning to, the media that moved me, the lessons experience taught the hard way, and the people who invested in me.

01 — beliefs

A growth mindset changes everything.

Straight out of Carol Dweck's Mindset: ability isn't fixed. Once you treat skill as something you build rather than something you're born with, it quietly rewrites what feels possible.

You have more control than it feels like.

You can't choose every outcome, but you can almost always learn and adapt your way toward a better one. Learning is the lever you actually get to pull.

Growth is the most valuable asset I own.

Compounded over a lifetime, what I learn outperforms anything else I could invest in — so I treat it like the asset it is, and protect the time for it.

02 — media that shaped how I think

03 — lessons, learned the hard way

Failure is just a data point.

A failed attempt isn't a setback, it's a measurement. Each one narrows the search for what actually works. Counted honestly, failure is progress.

Generosity is a currency.

Give intentionally and genuinely — time, attention, resources — and it compounds in ways you can never engineer directly.

Protect the work.

A Phoenix Project principle I keep close: guard your own focus and the work of the people around you from the constant chaos that tries to interrupt it.

Worthwhile things require work.

If it were easy it wouldn't be worth much. More often than not, the difficulty is the point — not the obstacle in front of it.

Curiosity is the engine.

Above all of it: stay curious. Curiosity is what keeps the learning going long after discipline runs out — the one habit under all the others.

04 — the people who invested in me

More than anything else on this page, this part matters. A handful of people have shaped how I think by investing their own knowledge in me.

mentor · my dad

Nathan Ice

The longest-running influence on how I think. Across a career of CIO roles — and as my dad — he's mentored and taught me my entire life, handing me the tools to handle both work and everything around it.

mentor

Blake Holman

My mentor this past year. We meet every week and talk through everything from work-life balance to managing technical teams and leading an organization — a steady, direct influence on how I'm learning to lead.

and others who've shaped a part of how I think

Shannon Ice Angela O'Brien Alan Burrow Addie Deinlein Suzanne Mallette James Parrish LeRoy Hardy David Thach Anna Sidorova Jyoti Dalal Rashmi Jain Laurie Giddens

projects

A few things I made, and how.

04 — the site itself

This site is a project too.

I designed it with Claude's design tool, then built it into a single static site with Claude Code — one hand-tuned core of type, spacing, and color that every page flexes on. No template and no page builder: just HTML, CSS, and a little vanilla JavaScript, revised page by page until it read the way I wanted. The proof is that you can look under it.