Biography
Growing Up in the Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Los Altos, Mountain View Area
I was born in San Francisco, at the then Stanford Hospital, and moved to Los Altos when I was 4 months old in 1956. It was a time of great change, growth and optimism in Santa Clara Valley. My parents moved to California as part of the post-World War II veterans’ migration west: many service men, such as my father, who had been stationed in California before deploying to the Pacific Theater had seen the promise of California and were investing in their future in the golden state.
Even before I could verbalize it, I was learning what would be the essence of Santa Clara Valley, that change would be the only constant and that hunger would be the hallmark in transforming Santa Clara Valley into Silicon Valley and arguably the leading economic growth engine in the world. We lived on Manor Way bounded by an orchard, a spur of the local railroad and a fire station. Within just a few years only the recently built fire station remained: the Railroad transformed into Foothill Expressway and the orchard became housing and a park.
Much of the institutional infrastructure on which we have built our communities was being built. In 1957 the most important institutions in my childhood were emerging: El Camino Hospital and Foothill Community College were created by voters/committees and and Almond and Egan schools were about to open.
In 1960 we moved “most of the way” cross town to a house that would allow me to walk the 3 blocks to Almond grade school, where I was a “Mustang” from grades K-6. I benefited from the “golden period” in California education where the schools from K-16 were providing the best public education in the country. I earned my share of cuts, bruises and concussions just being a boy.
In 9th grade I became an Eagle Scout and later was selected to join the Order of the Arrow. I enjoyed several summers at Camp Oljato near Fresno in the Sierras – the traditional summer camp for local scout troops. I spent one summer living with a family in Los Mochis, Mexico where, for at least a few brief weeks, I was close to fluent in Spanish. The exchange program promised that at least one room in each house would be air conditioned since the temperature rarely dipped below 100 degrees during the day or 80 degrees at night: that one room turned out to be the parents room into which I never stuck a toe.
At Los Altos High I played “D” and JV basketball and earned my tennis letter my junior year. Our senior yet we almost stopped Gunn’s consecutive victory streak, losing just 4-3.
Career
Following my time at VISTA and USMC Officer Candidate School I joined EF Hutton as an analyst in the investment banking division in Manhattan. After graduating from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business I joined Hewlett Packard as a product manager in the Information Networks Division based in Cupertino.
Anxious to take a shot at entrepreneurship I founded the Sylvan Learning Center franchise in Stockton. On year later I moved to San Diego when I bought four more Sylvan Learning Centers. Sylvan Learning Centers tutor children in grades K-12.
Few outcomes in my business career have been as satisfying as helping a child and a family turn around the downward spiral of poor grades, low self-esteem and engagement and acting-out into an enthusiasm for school and learning. After five years we sold the San Diego centers. I have kept the original center in Stockton which I describe as “an overnight success after 13 years.” It took many years’ commitment to the Stockton community that ultimately paid off in a successful center that is fully engaged with the educational leaders of the city.
After Sylvan I worked at a pair of promising kiosk companies that provided customers with essentially the Internet experience before the Internet. The second company morphed into one of the online music retail sites in 1995. Since that launch I have worked in eCommerce and online Marketing for the past 12 years at large companies like Dell where I led the team responsible for designing, developing, deploying and managing Dell.com which sold more than $1 billion/year. I have also worked at start-ups like Netli which was purchased by Akamai and WIRED Digital the online division of the cutting edge WIRED Magazine. WIRED was a truly exhilarating time and place where we are credited with having created and sold the first banner ad. Each day was unique as we, along with portals like Excite, Yahoo and InfoSeek tried to figure out what the content and commercial side of the WorldWideWeb meant. As a 40-year old working south of market in San Francisco I loved working with mostly 20-somethings, the majority of whom sported double-digit body piercings and/or multi-hued hair.
Currently I am Director of eCommerce at PGP Corporation which provides Enterprise Data Protection solutions to enterprises and consumers.
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