A longer story . . .

about my almost 50 years on the planet.

My childhood was spent growing up at the bottom of the Superstition Mountains in Apache Junction, AZ. My parents were both public school teachers, with my father later becoming a principal and superintendent. I like to say that I was raised with “unconditional love in a box.”

My parents were conservative Christians who loved me, spanked me, and nurtured in me a sense of being special in God’s eyes. I had little difficulty growing up. I was a good student, a good athlete, and had friends and family that cared about me. I was captain of the football team, student body president, valedictorian, and gave my first sermon to 200 people when I was 13 years old.  

I fell in love with someone very different from me - politically liberal, catholic, vegetarian, and homeschooled. I’ll never forget her saying to me on an early date, “for such a smart guy, you sure don’t think for yourself very much.” And between that partner, a favorite Aunt who sent me books like Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, and a professor my first year of college at Northern Arizona University, I began to confront my own homophobia, racism, and specialness while unwinding and seeking to make sense of a big world I seemed to know little about.

My personal and professional growth was also spurred on from experiences I had working as a first responder to crisis incidents at NAU including student suicide, sexual assault, domestic violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. A raw leader with natural talents who’d somehow become responsible for 800 first-year college students at the age of 22, I found myself becoming numb on the inside while trying to make sense of my own capacities, limits, and definitions of health and success.

I found a next set of useful tools, models, skills, and inspiration at the Arizona State University School of Social Work where I learned about macro-level social policy from internationally decorated faculty and also about wisdom, collaboration, and humility from a cohort of classmates like Annie Taeya - a 70 year-old Hopi elder. I pushed myself to understand the world from different perspectives and histories while seeking visions, strategies, and approaches to effective and transformative social change.

In 2003, I moved to Portland, Oregon as part of a team hired to design the Portland State University housing program from scratch. This was a time of robust professional learning as I spent my days creating and managing budgets, hr processes, contract and conduct systems while building a healthy organizational culture for 130 employees across four distinct teams.

My day-to-day role changed in 2006 when I joined the faculty of the PSU School of Social Work in a role that lays the foundation for my understanding of the Oregon social sector. As the Assistant Director of Field Education, I traveled statewide supporting and developing MSW internships in schools, corrections, medical, community, and mental health settings.

Running parallel to my work at PSU, I was an active leader and volunteer in an effort to create an unconventional school for young people ages 5 to 18. In 2007, I took a career risk and left PSU to serve as the school’s first Executive Director. The project and the community that surrounded it offered powerful learning grounds and, overtime, also brought me clarity about what I’m best at, most passionate about, and where I wanted to focus my changemaking energy.

Moving from hyper-local to national, I provided five years of leadership for IDEA where I lived out a job description that included providing innovative organizational leadership, strategic planning, and capacity development.

Leaving IDEA, I launched my first consulting practice where I advised philanthropic and community leaders, school superintendents, board members, and elected officials at all levels of government in both rural and urban environments. I sought to make critical connections across the U.S. to tell a bigger and better story about the future of learning and the need for social renewal, reinvention, and reinvestment in public education. One consulting project working with the Partnership for the Future of Learning turned into a full-time endeavor which I was fully focused on when I received a call asking if I’d be interested in working for the State of Oregon to help launch the Student Success Act and create a new Office of Education Innovation and Improvement at the Oregon Department of Education. It was an unbelievable learning experience, humbling, and rewarding. It happened to coincide with COVID-19 and so I, like so many of us, was stretched in new and important ways. It also grew my understanding of complex organizational, institutional, and government systems. I got to see and learning things I had dreamed about when I was a kid.

Now, I’m leaping into next adventures with eyes on a big horizon!

The next legs of my journey include supporting creative and pragmatic ways to nurture communities and people that are in the business of dignity, sovereignty, relationship, justice, sustainability, technical excellence, and joy. Whether schools, churches, institutions of higher education, non-profits, community organizing efforts, neighborhood associations, cities, elected officials, rural leaders, philanthropy, or state government systems, I’m excited to make a meaningful contribution.