I come from a middle-class family in rural Utah, USA, on the bench of the Wasatch Mountains with a nice view of the Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island from the kitchen window. As kids my friends and I hunted, fished, sledded, skied, and climbed the mountains together as often as we could. As children, we once painted a few cows lavender. The cows didn’t seem to mind much, but the farmer did.

At the barely-ripe age of eight years old, my dad took me to climb King’s Peak. At 13,528 feet and the highest mountain in Utah. The excursion would have an immense impact on my life. It was part of a fifty-mile backpacking trip with a Boy Scout troop. The trip was grueling. It was the first backpacking trip for my dad and me and by far the hardest thing I had ever done. Just thinking about it today makes me want to take a nap. In the 1970s, lightweight food and camping equipment were still a few years out. Our packs were so heavy. My dad never showed any sign of strain or discomfort. When I thought I couldn’t go another step, he walked next to me and lifted the weight off my shoulders and told me how great it would be when we reached camp. I only remember sleeping in camp, but the view at the summit of Kings Peak was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Backpacking became a family event every year after that to the Wind River Range in western Wyoming. I learned early on that friends could become as close as family. Backpacking led to a lifetime of rock climbing, mountaineering, off-roading, mountain-biking exploring, and just getting to the next summit. Among many others, I have ascended Grand Teton, Gannet Peak, and the Villarica volcano in Pucón, Chile twice. These days, I climb at Indian Creek in Moab, Utah, Gate and Challenge Buttresses in the Cottonwood canyons of Utah. School was an entirely different rock to climb.

I flunked Spanish class in the eighth grade. Trying to get the words to make sense was the most boring task imaginable at the time. Fourteen years later I earned a Bachelors Degree in Spanish. I served a religious mission in southern Chile for two years. There was almost zero English spoken there so it was sink or swim with the language. I had a few months of training but I was terrified nonetheless.

I eventually earned to love the language, and the Chilean people even more. I witnessed political unrest for the first time, and learned that not everyone has the luxury of medical care and social services. My experiences there led me to earn a Bachelors degree in Political Science, and then another in Spanish.

I married in the late 1980s. Me and my wife decided to have two or three kids but somehow ended up with six. Triplets will change anyone’s world. Minivans, super long strollers, and truckloads of formula made life interesting. My only demand for their education, other than attaining one, was to pick a language other than English and become fluent. Five chose Spanish, the black sheep chose Russian. Of values, we taught them three:

• All people have the capacity to be equally intelligent and capable regardless of race, religion, nationality, or sexual preference.
• Everyone deserves respect and the benefit of the doubt, until they don’t.
• Right and wrong exist regardless of how the world substitutes one for the other.

I began my career in IT through a telecom apprenticeship. I had been preparing for a career in federal law enforcement, the opportunity to work with telephones was originally just a part-time job to support my family. The apprenticeship turned into a full-time telecom analyst position setting up and managing call center back ends. Turns out I would end up working with federal law enforcement anyway, just not the way I planned. More about that later.

After a year, I was recruited away from the telecom analyst job to lead an IT service desk and telecom department at a new company. I rose through the managerial ranks to IT director and then recruited as a CIO at every job that followed. I picked up an MBA and many information systems and behavioral certifications to further my understanding and qualifications. Leadership, cybersecurity, many global implementations, mergers and acquisitions, and growing companies with leading technology have been the primary pillars of my career. I detail many examples and accomplishments throughout this site.