I was fortunate enough to get into IT at age 17, in 1994, right as the internet was really entering the business world. At the time my father was the head golf pro for Anaheim Hills Golf Course, which is owned by the City of Anaheim. In my father’s role as head pro he often interacted with City of Anaheim officials. My father had seen me tinker with our home computer, knew I was interested in computers, and got me a part-time job for the summer with the City of Anaheim in their internal IT department.

My part-time job, at City of Anaheim, was to inventory every computer in use at the City of Anaheim. I visited Anaheim stadium to inventory computers, the convention center, the police station, the fire stations, the public utilities facilities, the fleet services maintenance yard, and all of city hall. I had access to areas of the city not often seen by the public, and really enjoyed the behind the scenes view of the city.

I finished the inventory job before the summer was over, and the city agreed to keep me on for the remainder of the summer. I spent time with a consultant who was implementing a CD tower, which was a full data center rack with one server and rows of CD readers. The CDs themselves contained a law library, which was being made available to the city attorney’s office; this would allow multiple attorneys to research against the library of CDs simultaneously. Once the project was over, I ended up being the only person in the IT department who understood how the CD tower functioned and the city made me an offer to stay on-board part-time. Once I finished high school, I became a full-time employee for the City of Anaheim.

The City of Anaheim was great to me, and gave me a real on the job education, but more than anyone else I have my father to thank for my career in IT.

I am also a father of two boys and enjoy being active. I enjoy golf, dirt bike riding, and snowboarding. And yes, I still enjoy IT too.