I started out studying mechanical engineering. I always liked thinking about how people work with physical objects every day. I suppose that this was the closest an engineer can get to UX. Somewhere along the way, I realized I had a talent to explain things to people. They could be how things work, scientific theories that I got, or just explaining math homework to other classmates. In effect, I considered myself a translator, translating words from or for one audience into other terms that are well understood by a different audience. I didn't see myself as a communicator, although many told me that was what I could do. I saw communications as creating a message. I explained messages and, to me, that was more translation than communication.

So I thought, "how do I turn this into a profession?" I landed at a company in Massachusetts and tried out all sorts of different roles--technical writing, QA, development. I happened to like technical writing, and development was a lot of fun but, none were as interactive as I liked. And, so, when I got the offer to build out a new process and lead an integration team to deliver rapid fixes in short order, I took the chance to try something else. That role ended up turning me into one of the company's first agile program managers.

That role fit me well--I solved problems, worked with a team to do it, cultivated ideas, and cleared the way for us to make things happen. It was a great way of keeping your pulse on things and getting things done.

My most significant influencers are the ones that gave me the freedom to accomplish things the way I saw fit while providing the guidelines to not go off the rails. Being able to do that is, in itself, a fine art, to be sure. I've had a handful of people who influence me that way--Steve, Dan, Karl, Sam, Rob. In terms of books, I am a huge fan of the Freakonomics series. To me, that is the written form of data science. These books popularized looking at data to find trends and make decisions.