My Meandering Career – What’s It All About?

After the eighth grade, my vocation agricultural teacher, Dick Breyer, took me under his wing, and gave me great opportunities in vocational agriculture, Future Farmers of America and even co-signed notes for me to invest in various farm projects. Under his tutelage, I won a soil judging contest at the FFA Regional Leadership Training camp which took me to Michigan State as a ninth grader. I grew to believe that my calling was to be in agriculture, to provide the food and fiber for the world. That led to my Agricultural Economics undergraduate degree at Michigan State University and graduate program at University of California, Davis, and back to Michigan to work for the agricultural cooperative. I then went to law school at Stanford to be a better agricultural business manager.

That turned out to be a mistake, as I became overqualified and sort of a fish out of water in agriculture. I settled in Wenatchee, Washington after law school, in the private practice of law, among the numerous agricultural cooperatives there in the fruit growing area, hoping to find an opening as a cooperative manager as I got to know people. It never happened, and in the meantime, I got involved in politics, and had some wonderful experiences in Olympia, Washington performing several assignments with the Washington State Legislature, Attorney General’s Office and Governor’s Office that my mentors needed done. That too was a mistake, as my resume became so chopped up that it looked like I could not hold a job. Nonetheless, I gained skills that have served me well since.

In 1989, I finally got the opportunity I was looking for, by becoming the Manager of the Cherry Division of the cooperative in Michigan I worked for before I went to Law School, Unfortunately, I recommended the closure of the division two years later, and then in the next 6 years worked for three other agricultural companies, two of which went belly-up as well due to volatile agricultural commodity markets. Hmmm, time to rethink my career plan.

After 17 months of running an Internet company out of my home, I decided I needed to do something else, something more stable. That is when I became the Business Manager for Adrian Public Schools. As has been my norm, I tried to learn as much as I could in this role, to maximize my performance so I enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Educational Administration at Michigan State. Later, I served as Business Manager at Harper Woods Schools, and then as a mortgage loan officer in 2009 until I decided to launch this campaign.

Through my many ventures, I have sought to make a positive impact in people’s lives like Dick Breyer did for me. His actions instilled in me a need to make a contribution to others.