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My Story

Born in Titusville, Florida, I've lived in Jacksonville essentially my entire life. Leaving my job at the Jacksonville Sherrif's Office, where I worked as a dispatcher and a Reserve Police Officer, I spent three years at Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pennsylvania), where I studied biological psychology (neurobiology) and physical anthropology, but returned home without completing my degree.

After college, I entered the IT field, focusing mostly on website design and site management, a self-learned skill that had served me well during the time I was away at college, where I had taught web design to help pay my way through school. I also started working as the lighting engineer at one of the larger nightclubs here in north Florida. Before long, I had spent enough time watching the DJ and practicing that they offered me a couple of nights per week to spin. I was a resident DJ there for three years.

In September of 2001, as the smoke was still clearing from the site of the World Trade Center attacks, companies were spending less and less money on technology as the economy began to feel the impact from the attacks. No longer feeling comfortable with relying on my ability to find web design work to put food on the table, and wanting desparately to get out of the non-stop excitement of being in the clubs six nights a week, I decided look for a full-time day job.

I was hired by a company that provides outsourced benefits to other companies and began working as a business analyst. I'm quick to learn things and that allowed me to pick up very valuable technical skills (SQL, Visual Basic, etc) very quickly, and before long, I had been promoted a couple of times and was managing all of the data operations for the client team to which I was assigned. It was here that I learned the skills that would carry me forward to where I am today.

After completing Six Sigma Black Belt training, I worked on a team that performed process improvements and responded to emergency situations in the company, such as large data operations or preparation for upcoming audits. A year or so ago, I followed my boss to his new company, where I now work as a Business Implementation Consultant. It's a less-grueling job, though the duties I'm tasked with are much larger than at my last company. I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's the happiest I've ever been when not wearing a uniform.

And Today

I live with my wife and our Boston Terrier, Clancy. We live a pretty boring life in the grand scheme of things. We spend our weekends watching Law & Order: SVU or Grey's Anatomy, running or working out at the YMCA. We're happy though, and there's something to be said for that.

We recently bought our first home in the Fort Caroline area of Jacksonville. While we miss the old homes in the historic district of Avondale, we are so happy to finally be living in a place that we can say is our own. Besides, we've always had bad luck when it came to sharing walls with crazy people, so at least this way we don't have to worry about anyone bothering us!