As a young person, my personal heroes were renaissance men like Da Vinci and Ben Franklin - people who were interdisciplinary, inventive and innovative thinkers, and who often crossed the lines outside the traditional areas of study.

I literally walked around high school wearing a tuxedo jacket like Ben Franklin because those were my heroes. So, with that in mind, I've always been kind of a polymath, interested in a lot of different disciplines--honing skills but mostly intent on learning from each discipline and applying it to the others. So, when I went to college, I took fine arts and science and engineering, but chose not to refine my area of interest even in terms of my degree. So, I obtained a set of certifications as a sound engineer and as an acoustical engineer, a minor in physics. I took fine art, did sculpting and painting and things like that.

Those things stayed with me in my professional experience. I always take the approach of drawing from different areas of inquiry and different inputs, and solving problems in ways that involve thinking creatively, laterally - combining technical and creative disciplines. 

My jobs have been very varied as well. I think the first job was a children's book illustrator. I did sound engineering for a local Chicago theater. Later I broke into more of a corporate setting where I worked in product development, running prototypes in a lab setting. All the different jobs I had were a good match for somebody who has these kinds of broad interest areas and a multi-disciplinary approach.

I would occasionally flip back and forth between the business side and the technical side of the house - being a project leader or a lead architect, until I ended up in a situation where I could run a practice. Running a practice meant that I could bring together innovative teams and collaborate with folks who had deep specialization.

What was interesting about the direction my interests carried me--and I didn't have a strategy around where I would go and work--was that this nexus of design, implementation of design, tech and engineering coincided with the emergence of the Internet. As the Internet became an area of focus, design and engineering were the two components of successful transformation for companies. I had a passion for, and interest in both, as well as skills in both, which made me good at helping companies go through those kinds of transformations--Building teams that combine creative and engineering mindsets and abilities. It's been like a playground for me because that's been my love--being multi-disciplinary and combining creative and technical pursuits.

A couple of the people I worked for early on were very influential. Arnie Lund, who was at Microsoft and G.E., is one. Our paths crossed when we both worked in Telecom--one of the regional Bell companies, where he led the user experience practice there. He gave me an opportunity to run a four-billion-dollar lab; a massive installation of technology. I was a young person at the time and he said, "Help the teams with their experiments". And so, this person really gave me an opportunity to learn so many things, and to learn how to learn about new technologies. He went on to do marvelous things in his area of expertise and in user experience. So, I think it'll be worth the while tracking that guy down to see what he's done and published.