Stephen grew up in Castle Rock, Colorado, where he began studying violin under the instruction of Kim Watkins. He was a member of various local, state, and regional orchestras through high school, with long-standing membership in the Arapahoe Youth Philharmonic Orchestra under Vince LaGuardia and the Douglas County High School chamber orchestra under Roy Safstrom. He earned a degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he continued playing violin as a member of the Boulder Symphony, conducted by Devin Patrick Hughes. He moved to Boston in 2019 and currently works as a postdoctoral fellow studying antibiotic resistance at the Harvard School of Public Health.