Pushing Past Possible
Zach enlisted in the Marine Corps straight out of high school and served as a machine gunner with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines for four years, reaching the rank of E-5 in just three years. He deployed twice and never saw combat. On his second deployment, Zach learned his wife was having an affair — ultimately leading the couple to go their separate ways in March of 2018.
Just a short time later, Zach was in a motorcycle accident that resulted in a traumatic brain injury (TBI). He became confrontational, impulsive, and struggled with depression for the first time in his life. , and he began to spiral, self-medicating with alcohol as he headed downhill. He was honorably discharged that August and returned home to Colorado to pursue a nursing degree. From the outside, things looked great, but he continued spiraling into an increasingly dark place. By the spring of 2019 he’d reached a tipping point. On March 31, 2019, he held his Glock 19 between his eyes and pulled the trigger.
Somehow he survived, but his life would never be the same. When he was taken off life support, Zach awoke to find he was completely blind and deaf in one ear. Refusing to fall victim to his new circumstances, he stepped out on a journey to build himself back up and break down barriers. He learned how to feed himself and walk again, and was snowboarding in the Rocky Mountains less than nine months after he tried to kill himself. A month after that he was back in college, then living on his own again another six months later.
Today, he's a self-taught, award-winning software developer and entrepreneur making the digital world a more accessible place for everyone. He's a speaker and writer with a book on the way, and he hosts conversations with impactful people from all walks of life each week on his podcast, Going in Blind.
He began learning how to eat, brush his teeth, and walk again — and just eight-and-a-half months later, he was in the Rocky Mountains trying to snowboard again. A month after that, he was back in college, where he ran into a new kind of barrier: his classes weren’t accessible with the access technology he’d spent months learning to use. He decided to become part of the solution — dropping out to teach himself how to code so he could build software everyone can use.
He founded Dark Horse Game Studios to increase awareness around digital accessibility, and published his first application two years later, in 2023. That first creation, a word game called Zanagrams, won two Game of the Year awards from accessibility-focused sites, and he continues that work with Dark Horse today.
Outside of work, Zach constantly seeks challenges in ways many wouldn’t expect: he skis, rock climbs, whitewater kayaks, skydives, and competes in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu against practitioners without disabilities. In 2026 he rode 1,000 miles with the Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Ride, a journey covered by outlets from The Colorado Sun to NBC10 Philadelphia.
He’s now working to motivate and save the lives of others by sharing his story — on stage, on Going in Blind, the podcast he hosts and has grown to nearly 100 episodes, and everywhere in between.