I grew up on the north side of Springfield (IYKYK), out in the country where I spent long summer days playing pretend in the woods, biking to the creek, and whiling away the hours mostly alone. In school, I was bored and bullied, and after my parents got divorced, I frequently stole food to get by.

When I went to college, I studied religion and poetry, because we were told that it didn't matter what your degree was in, so long as you had one. While that wasn't true, I'm glad for my liberal arts education that focused on reading large amounts of text quickly, thinking critically about it, synthesizing it, and then communicating complex concepts in as simple and straight-forward a fashion as possible. Those skills have served me well in my career.

For more than 20 years, I have been leading technology teams. I was an accidental system administrator, a bit of a web developer, and spent a lot of time in operations management before becoming both a project and a product manager. But what I love most is helping people grow in their careers and helping teams work better together. I do this by trying to lead like Jesus did: love people, respect them, recognize their inherent dignity, and guide them in working and communicating more efficiently and effectively.