We are a group of 4, mostly 3 EST, 1 CST with fairly open schedules. 3 of us are pretty new and the other has experience playing DnD. We need a DM that is laid back but will also give a challenge and make it fun.

Are you looking to have one of the official campaigns run, like the starter campaigns such as Ice Spire Peak or Lost Mines of Phandelver? Are you looking for PbP or for a virtual tabletop group such as Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds? Do you want to use Discord at all? I ask all of these as I am a somewhat experienced DM who just got my account back from the void (I lost my email for a while there, wonderful memorizing skills me *forgot my own email address since I rarely log in to it these days*) I work pretty much the weekdays with variable monday/saturdays in PST (off around 5PM PST so able to run in the evening if on a work day, unless we had surgery cuz then I'm wiped) and to be perfectly fair I've had SHIT luck at getting a game to last more than a few months due to either schedule conflicts, people moving, or people vanishing entirely...not that my own vanishing act probably didn't help...life/work balance is tricky.

Anyway, questions still stand. Official campaign/starter campaign? PbP, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Discord, or combination?

Any kind of campaign would be fine, a bit of patience might be necessary because even though we all have the basics down we still sometimes forget to do things or might get distracted.  Discord would be a definite as we already have a server group for it.  We all have pretty consistent or flexible schedules, I probably have the most inconsistency but its barely there, and any site to use a virtual desktop is fine as long as its good.

I'm usually very fast to understand things and such and my one friend that's in the group is pretty quick to learn with things in that category.  And can send you my discord and we can discuss it more tomorrow at some point as right now I'm free all day everyday until Monday.

Drop me a PM and yeah we can talk. If you don't have a Fantasy Grounds license then running on Roll20 would be easier as its free and I don't have the cash right now to upgrade my Fantasy Grounds license to allow unlicensed players to be a part of any games I run.