After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in December of 1993, I was a bit unsure about what I wanted to do for a career. I settled in at Sony Electronics as a customer relations rep while I figured things out. I ultimately attended graduate school at Cornell University in August of 1995. During my summer internship in 1996, I began working with PeopleSoft and emerging technologies enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and related reporting applications.
After grad school, I started my brief career in corporate human resources. That wasn’t the best fit for me, and I quickly gravitated to work rooted in technology, data, and systems. In 1998, I took my first IT job, traveling extensively to Latin America on a global PeopleSoft project for a Fortune 50 company. During that time, I taught myself advanced Microsoft Excel and Access, Crystal Reports, Structured Query Language (SQL), and a host of other applications. I became very adept at manipulating enterprise data. To paraphrase Walter White: I liked it. I was good at it.
I started full-time consulting in 2000. Beyond consulting, I taught software classes to clients and my colleagues. I decided to become my own boss in 2002.
How I Pay My Bills
I have written seven books:
- Message Not Received: Why Business Communication Is Broken and How to Fix It (Wiley, 2015)
- The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions (Wiley, 2014)
- Too Big to Ignore: The Business Case for Big Data (Wiley, 2013)
- The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business (Motion Publishing, 2011)
- The New Small: How a New Breed of Small Businesses Is Harnessing the Power of Emerging Technologies (Motion Publishing, 2010)
- The Next Wave of Technologies: Opportunities in Chaos (Wiley, 2010)
- Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects (Cengage, 2010). AuthorHouse originally published this book in February of 2009. Later that year, Cengage bought its rights and subsequently published an enhanced version of the book. The second edition far exceeds the first in every possible way. Seriously.
Aside from writing and speaking, today I advise all types of organizations on matters related to communication, strategy, management, data, and technology. I like to think that I’ve been reasonably successful. Over my career, I have cultivated close to 100 clients in a wide variety of industries, including health care, manufacturing, retail, education, telecommunications, and the public sector. I have worked with many different organizations that use technology in many different ways–some better than others.
Where Am I?
On a scorching day in July of 2011, I moved to Las Vegas, NV. (Here’s why.) I currently reside here