Welcome! As you may have deduced, this is my little corner of the internet, the place where you get to know a little more about me and what I do.
Born and raised in Rochester, NY I originally went to Syracuse University for public relations, but quickly found an aptitude and love for multiple disciplines and specialities. Those early endeavors were a pretty good indicator of the path my professional career would take me. From my first web internship with Distilled, a 3 person-team in a church basement (now a multinational company!), to web/graphic design/video at a variety of universities, and eventually to IT management overseeing the full breadth of university technology, whenever there's a challenge or a new technology to learn I'm typically the first to jump in, explore, and learn. Kind of like your own personal Peter Petrelli (+10 points if you get the 'Heroes' reference!).
In my freelancing years, I spent a while traveling the country and living in New York City, London, Utah, and New Hampshire and having grand adventures. Upon meeting my future wife in New Hampshire, however, I set off on the grandest adventure of all and moved to Boston to marry her.
While in Boston, I spent a great deal of my time expanding not only my technical skills, but also growing to a more project management, content direction and team coordinator role. Much of my office time was spent in CMS environments, project management software and meetings with community members, but I still reveled in the days when I could roll up my sleeves and get elbow deep in code and pixels.
After almost 5 years in Boston, however, my beautiful wife accepted an exciting position in Galveston, TX and we were off on our next adventure. I took a position as a Web Developer at Rice University. They hired me on the promise that I could pick up the slack where needed. Their choice paid off completely when two months after I was hired we lost multiple developers, losing whole swathes of technical and institutional knowledge as a result. Soon after, I was diving into multiple new languages, new content management and development tools, and picking up skills left and right.
As much as we loved Texas, when my wife was offered an exciting new career option in Michigan and with the boy growing up quickly, it was time to settle down back closer to family and put down some roots, both geographically and technologically. Jumping right in, I project managed and implemented Kettering’s first internal-facing web application. In doing so, I met with and built relationships with over 100 different constituents in every area of the university. This put me in a unique position to continue as an IT liaison to the university community for ongoing projects. The total university knowledge and proven relationship-building meant that, when the Vice President of IT left, I as asked to step in as interim. Two years and a Master’s degree later, I was asked to step into the role permanently.
So that's where I am now. From public relations intern to full-fledged CIO for a remarkable STEM-focused university, my career has been defined by the wonderful people I've worked with enabling me to push myself and expand. The more skills and understanding you can pick up, the more ready you'll be to step up when the need arises.
Outside of work, I try to keep myself active with any outdoor recreation activity available to me. Backpacking, canoeing, mountain biking, rock climbing...you name it, and the gear's probably in my closet. When conditions keep me indoors, I keep myself occupied with tinkering on the engines, 3D-printing, and microcontroller development, full hobbies in their own rights. Usually by my side in these adventures are my faithful dogs, who have worked very hard to become some of the most obedient and adventuresome canines you could ever hope to snuggle up next to in a sleeping bag.
