Growing up in a small Midwestern town in Wisconsin, I was fortunate to be exposed to computers early. My father worked for printing companies in the 1980s and 1990s, starting as a pre-press draftsman. At that time, graphic design meant light tables and film-based layouts for magazines and catalogs. As computers became powerful enough to manipulate digital graphics, he taught himself early systems such as Scitex imaging computers and, eventually, the Apple Macintosh.
My first computer was an old Commodore 64 that I believe my father bought at a garage sale. It came with a box of goodies: a floppy disk drive, random software, a monochrome green-screen display, a dot-matrix printer, and a few games—including The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which left a lasting impression.
What I’m most grateful for is not just having a computer at a young age, but having the freedom to explore it with full autonomy.
My father gave me a used computer and basically left me to figure out how to use it. Looking back, that set me on a path of wanting to understand how things work and gave me critical-thinking skills that would serve me well later. After the Commodore came an Apple IIe—hooked to the family television with an RCA cable—and the real star, a classic Macintosh SE with an actual graphical interface.
The first spark
A hallway, three doors, and HyperCard.
Software has always been the real fascination. The spark arrived in eighth grade, when I found HyperCard on a Macintosh in the classroom. It was not something we were being taught; it was simply there, so I took advantage.
I built a small game: a hallway with three doors—one ahead and two on the sides—and the player had to choose the right sequence while navigating different obstacles. I had no internet and no HyperCard book. I still remember the satisfaction when I finally got it working by figuring it out on my own, and then presented it to a classroom that was, for 1997 in a small town, genuinely impressed. Sadly, it remains the last game I ever developed.
In high school, my father opened a printing company and bought more powerful Macs with Photoshop, Illustrator, and QuarkXPress. I helped with projects and learned image cloning, color correction, and production work. After graduating, I tried art college in Chicago. I quickly learned that traditional graphic design was not quite right for me. Had there been a user-experience track at the time, I might have stayed.
Where the career actually began
The manufacturing floor.
After leaving college, I worked a series of jobs before arriving at a company that manufactured slot machines. Without a degree, I started in assembly, helping build them. A modern slot machine is essentially a computer inside a very secure box. Within a year, I moved into quality assurance and became responsible for testing the machines.
The team recorded results in Excel. When the line was down, I spent free moments making my own version of the spreadsheet and streamlining it. Then I discovered controls, mini forms, and macros. I created a faster data-entry process that also aggregated the results so my manager did not have to.
That work got noticed. A few years later, I moved into the call center as a technician on second shift, which gave me the opportunity to return to school at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside and work toward computer science. I finally had a direction.
Running a call center
When the side project became the job.
I enjoyed customer service, and the manager who brought me into the call center happened to know a little coding as a hobby. He introduced me to Visual Basic 6. It was not part of either of our jobs, but I saw opportunities everywhere. I began writing small Windows applications in my downtime to help technicians capture data during a call, eventually integrating with the phone system so a form could appear when a call came in.
After a few years, my manager left and I was fortunate to take the role. I had a strong team that largely ran itself, which gave me room to keep improving the tools. The reports surfaced metrics the organization had never captured and helped identify product issues earlier. Soon, other departments were asking for help.
The company had a large IT staff focused mostly on its Oracle ERP system. Its backlog was so long that departments had largely stopped requesting enhancements. They exported data from Oracle and managed their own processes in Excel. I have seen that pattern many times since.
I became what is sometimes called “shadow IT”—until IT decided I belonged with them.
I moved into a formal solution-architecture and development role. My early stack was .NET, C#, WinForms, Access, and later SQL Server, Silverlight, WPF, and WCF. That foundation carried me far. I eventually left as Senior Manager of Custom Development, leading developers responsible for the company’s non-Oracle custom applications.
Consulting and beyond
The technology changed. The point of it did not.
After ten years moving from the manufacturing floor to software leadership, I entered consulting. The work exposed me to Azure, Xamarin, Angular, React, Docker, NoSQL, SharePoint, Power Apps, Dataverse, and plenty more. I also kept one foot in interface design, using tools such as Sketch and Figma when a project needed it.
More important than the stack was the exposure to many organizations and many versions of the same basic challenge. I learned to focus on the business problem before the platform. The best software relationships are partnerships: we listen closely, challenge processes when necessary, and create applications people want to use rather than have to use.
In 2021, I formed Empath Design. The name comes from empathic design and the idea that observation can uncover needs people may not yet know how to articulate. The company grew beyond my own consulting to include people I have hired, mentored, and placed on projects. That is a natural extension of my own unconventional path: potential does not always arrive with the expected résumé.
Today, my work also includes Harbor Hub, the coworking and event space I opened in downtown Kenosha, and the Great Lakes Technology Corridor, a community I created to connect the region’s technology ecosystem. They may look different from software projects, but the instinct is familiar—notice what is missing, bring people together, and make something useful.
I love what I do, and I still enjoy sharing that curiosity with others.