I have owned computers since the age of seven, played piano since before I can remember, and been writing, drawing, and creating in one form or another for my entire life.
An alumnus of the original High School of Performing Arts in New York City, I played Carnegie Recital Hall when I was twelve, having started formal piano lessons at the age of six. I was the kid who routinely disappointed my parents’ party guests by playing Brahms and Rachmaninoff when they were hoping for Billy Joel and Barry Manilow. Lacking the discipline to compete in a conservatory environment, I opted to grow my hair, play in rock bands and attend Hunter College, majoring in something that came naturally to me: creative writing. I confess to having had fantasies of being the coolest English professor imaginable, sort of like the main character in “Wonder Boys.”
I spent two semesters as a teacher’s assistant for my favorite professor of all time, graduated in 1990, then moved on to tutoring part time at Queensborough Community College Writing Center.
In 1992, I picked up and moved to San Francisco, where I embarked upon my corporate career. This led to a string of positions at organizations ranging from non-profits to global financial institutions. Somehow, I’ve managed to be the go-to guy for everything graphics-related, though I lack any “formal” visual design training. My father, however, was a professional advertising artist. Perhaps there is a correlation.
After a brief ten-year stint in New York as Director of Corporate Communications at a healthcare organization which ended unceremoniously via Blackberry, I returned to the West Coast and, ironically, to the non-profit sector, as Design and Information Technology Manager for BayBio, a biotechnology trade association in South San Francisco, before joining Quaddra Software, a San Jose startup building a very cool storage analytics and management tool to make sense of unstructured data and enable hybrid cloud scenarios.
I devoted some time to the Lean Startup Circle, a group dedicated to applying lean startup thinking and building lean startup leadership. If you’re interested in some trends and schools of thought within the startup community, it might behoove you to grab yourself a copy of Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup.
I’ve been known to play the role of renegade, uncertified Adobe instructor for AcademyX, Sterling Ledet and Associates, and Future Media Concepts, maybe even teaching JavaScript or WordPress on a good day.
I even worked as a Senior Web Developer on the Mazda website redesign project after Quaddra Software was interviewed by Google for a possible acquisition (no, we were not acquired, but it felt good to be recognized).
Throughout it all, when I find myself in Windows environments, I can’t stop myself from automating things, such as Microsoft Office, particularly Excel, and I’ve done some wild things with VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). If you happen to be using Excel, chances are I could give you back years of your life and save you untold sums of money in the process. Let me surprise you.
In the meantime, if you have a few minutes, head on over to my VBA companion site Option Explicit for code samples and assorted articles and commentary.
I have worn many hats. That continues to be the case.
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