Joseph K. Goodman originally comes from the Groton / New London area of Connecticut which his mother's family has called home since the early 1700s. As a descendant of the Perkins family who helped to start both the Massachusetts and Connecticut Colonies as well as fight the British in the Revolutionary War at the Battle of Fort Griswold, Mr. Goodman strives to be like many of the sons and daughters who have come before him whom have grown to become pillars of the community through a long history of public and civic service.

Mr. Goodman, in keeping with the tradition of the Perkins family name (even when it changes through marriage) has started to ensure that he too will carry on the honor of the family name. Though in 1999, he broke from tradition and moved to Virginia, he has started to become involved in community activities, especially politics. Currently Mr. Goodman works with and supports the Republican Party of Virginia through the College Republicans at Virginia Tech as well as both the Montgomery County and Pulaski County Republican Parties and by supporting Virginia Leutenant Governor William T. 'Bill' Bolling through his Building a Better Virginia PAC. On top of political organizations, Joseph actively supports the Virginia Citizens' Defense League, the Linux/Unix Users Group at Virginia Tech, the Virginia Tech Windows Users Group amd the Open Source Alternatives group also at Virginia Tech.

As a result of his past political endeavors, Mr. Goodman has had the luxury of meeting dozens of Congressmen, many Senators, and several Governors - most while attending the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Since the convention, in 2005 he had the opportunity to attend the Presidential Inauguration and participate in the Virginia state-wide elections as an election offical in Montgomery County.

Of course, not everything that Mr. Goodman does is political, currently, he is employed by Outrach Information Services as the IT Security and Support Specialist. Outreach Information Servuices or OIS, is the IT support group for the Outreach and International Affairs office at Virginia Tech. While a student at Virginia Tech, Mr. Goodman studied both computer engineering and computer science. It is his hope that at some point he will be able to take his studies and use them to obtain a degree in either computer engineering or business information technology.

Though he studies engineering, Mr. Goodman specializes in researching web-based software engineering and development (recently dubbed Web 2.0 and SaaS). His research is focused on web-based application development used to augment the learning experience of students studying several topics online the main topic being online Computer Science. Also, he studies ways to convert courses once previously taught only in a classroom to wjere tjr coutdr is some if not entrirely delived on the web. What he has found so far is that often times the problem does not lye in the course material or the ability to teach it online, but rather the willingness of the institution and its faculty to adopt modern learning techniques.

Finally, computers and civics are not the only things that Mr. Goodman spends his time on. On June 19, 2004, Laura J. Herring became Mrs. Goodman. After a long engagement, they were married on a nice summer day at the War Memorial Chapel on the campus of Virginia Tech. In December of that year, they purchased their home outside of the Blacksburg, VA area to escape the college town environment and settle down somewhere nice and quiet.