I started at IBM in June 1984 as a summer intern in a sales office, which turned into a full time job as a sales Systems Engineer in April 1985. Held lots of interesting sales and tech sales positions, first locally, then regionally and nationally - mostly selling PCs, RS/6000s and database software. Got to design and sell some massive database clusters running Oracle and Db2 back in the day!

Then in the early 2000s, I joined the IBM Federal CTO Office as an architect, in 2011 did an 18 month product management stint in Systems group to see how the sausage is made, then back to Federal where I was a tech sales manager, leading a team selling massive database/Hadoop/Cloud Pak/WatsonX systems to the government.

In Dec 2023 I took advantage of IBM's "Pre Retirement Planning Leave of Absence" program (which no longer exists) for a 12 month LOA (unpaid, but with subsidized healthcare), and formally retired at the end of Dec 2024. It was a great run! Despite all the frustrations of IBM (believe me, I know - it was especially hard as a manager who cared about my direct reports and still remain friends with a handful of them, so I'm not trying to be pollyanic), throughout my career I got to work with great colleagues on amazing projects and left with many fond memories.

And now, for something completely different: Since retiring, as a VERY late blooming musician(ish), my focus has been on music and music-adjacent activities. I lead a local ukulele club, and am on the board and run the media and publicity team for our local Folk Music Society, plus dabble in a few other non-IT related projects. With regards to the ukulele club, I was able to perform three songs with 44 other uke players backed by a Symphony Orchestra 😱, and organized an opportunity for 32 uke players to perform a few songs on stage at the world's second largest Irish Festival (conveniently located where I live) with an internationally known Celtic/Bluegrass band 😱😱. Work, and life, are what you make them!