Bio
Let me tell you a little something about me and my history. From my early days in Orem, Utah to my time travelling around the world, I have learned a lot about life and people on my journey. Image credit: SkyDive Utah
The Early Years
I was born in Provo, Utah in 1971, but until I was 18, I lived in Orem. At the time Orem was a farming community and as luck would have it, I grew up on one of those farms. My grandparents had apple orchards with Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Jonathan apples. We also raised tomatoes, beans, and alfalfa for a couple of horses. Growing up on the farm also meant working at the family store, Verds.
Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane
I joined the Army National Guard right out of High School and spent my time serving in the 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne). I spent my training in South Carolina and Georgia and then returned to Utah to finish out my time jumping out of airplanes and working with some of the most amazing and dedicated soldiers I have ever met. Unfortunately, I injured my knee on a jump (well, after a jump) and wasn't able to complete my time as an active SF Soldier, but I still carry the dicipline I learned while serving.
Somehow, They Called Me on a Mission
I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Barcelona, Spain from 1990 to 1992. That sounds like a pretty common thing for a kid in Utah, but for me it was a struggle deciding whether I should go. Initially I had to wait for my visa in San Diego for four months before I was able to get to Spain. I spent time in northern and southern Spain and even on the Balearic Islands. I learned to speak Spanish and Catalan over the course of my mission, and I learned to love the people, food, and culture of Spain.
Marriage, Kids, Careers...
When I returned from my mission, I married my high-shhool sweetheart, and we started our family a couple of years later. Looking back now, I realize just how crazy I was go get married and have kids with nothing but a high-school graduation and hope, but I guess I have been doing crazy things my whole life. I fell into a great job with a good friend where I got to learn the ins and outs of computers, networking, design, and marketing. That led me to another job where I learned about the printing industry and started playing with digital file delivery. From there I worked as a developer/gopher for a software company, and then for ZCMI in their advertising department.
When ZCMI was sold, I went to work at one of my favorite jobs, Allbee Green. I learned more about networking, web design, multimedia design, and project management while travelling the world doing events for companies like Dell, Novell, and Komatzu. I met amazing people and learned enough to eventually start my own business, Strudelhosen. After running Strudelhosen, I was given an opportunity to work for Slickdeals in Las Vegas. It was a chance to work on a huge, mature codebase with top-notch developers and dev ops professionals. I think I learned more in those 6 years with Slickdeals than I had in the previous years of my career.
While at Slickdeals I completed my bachelor's degree with University of Phoenix, online, and went on to complete a master's degree in management and leadership and an MBA with an IT Product Management focus at Western Governors University. With my degree path completed (although I am considering a PhD at some point), I applied to teach at Brigham Young University - Idaho online. I was accepted to teach JavaScript and Python to students from all over the world and continued to teach for 4 years after leaving Las Vegas.
A bank job (not that kind) brought me back to Utah, but I ended up leaving one kid, and my heart, in Vegas. At the bank I was able to test some theories about how I wanted to manage people, and what I thought would work best. It was a formative time, and the fact that my former employees will still speak to and hang out with me means more to me than anyone could guess. Now I am working back in retail IT, which has changed so much since I was at ZCMI, but I am loving every minute (well, maybe not when the site crashes at midnight, but you get the idea!). Keep an eye on Sundance Catalog to see what I am working on today.
