This page provides an overview of my work philosophy and the experiences I’ve had getting me to where I am now in my professional career. For a quick and detailed overview of my work and educational experience check out my portfolio or resume/cv pages.
If you want to know about my work experience, I must start by saying that I am a strong purveyor of the saying “Work to live, don’t live to work.” I firmly believe that one’s work/life balance needs to be = or as close to zero as possible (given that formula at least). That is not to say you can’t enjoy work, since when you’re working on something you enjoy or that challenges you it is often the case that you are enhancing your life as well. I’ve had projects where I worked 20 hour days and was glad to do it because I was thoroughly enjoying the experience; however, I’ve also had times when I worked 4 hour days and wanted to shoot myself in the face because the work was only attractive to me because of the paycheck I’d get once it was complete. Regardless of the scenario, I always put forth 100% of my effort to complete the task assigned to me at the highest level of quality (it is impossible to put forth >100%, people that claim to do 110% are liars). I do this because my philosophy with work is that 1) even though you may not think a job is important, somebody does and that somebody and others may rely on your work in the future, 2) you never know what opportunities a job well done will provide you in the future, and 3) if you’re going to do something half-ass you should not do it at all. I think it’s a pretty straightforward philosophy that centers around producing high-quality work to avoid burning bridges and creating a good reputation. Feel free to apply it to your own life as it’s yet to fail me.
With all that being said, I have 5+ years experience working as an Independent Consultant. I started by doing freelance industrial engineering based jobs (e.g., lean, facility planning, workflow optimization, etc.) and then moved into the human factors space just before completing my M.S. degree in Human Factors. I’ve been doing HF consulting part-time for almost 4 years now with a focus on information architecture, usability and user experience projects. I’ve working with a range of companies from sole-proprietorships to multibillion dollar corporations across the U.S. and recently signed on for a project with a non-profit company based out of Ecuador.
In addition to my consulting, I have also been a full-time university student since 2001. I received my B.S. from Northeastern University (Go Huskies!) in Industrial Engineering in 2006. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and with engineering honors distinction and was awarded top place for my senior capstone design project that focused on the design and prototyping of a universally usable cellular phone. The competition was a 2 year long team project where I worked with 2 other students. Our group was the only to have three members (most had 4 or 5) and was also one the only one that produced a completely original project – other projects served so solve existing problems that were sponsored by local companies. Additionally, while at Northeastern I was lucky enough to land a full-time co-op position at General Dynamics, C4 Systems in Massachusetts working as an industrial engineer and at Microsoft in Washington working first as a Programs Analyst and then as a Program Manager. I was at General Dynamics for 1.5 years working at least part-time while in school and full-time while on co-op rotation. My experience at Microsoft was with two different teams in two different 6 month full-time co-op rotations (with a semester of school in between them).
After graduating Northeastern I began my consulting work but also started pursing my MBA as well as my M.S. in Human Factors in Information Design full-time at Bentley University. During my first summer attending Bentley, I served as a consulting intern within the school’s for-profit consulting agency, the Bentley Design & Usability Center. It was after this experience that I got into freelance Human Factors consulting with my first client being Big Fish Games of Washington. I was also able to work on two year long consulting projects as part of my MBA coursework for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as a program manager for a project working to implement real-time emergency department patient feedback, and for RSA (division of EMC) as the Knowledge Manager on a project focused on determining the market readiness for data leak prevention products throughout the European Union. While at Bentley I was also a founder of a human factors student group that worked to provide free consulting services to local non-profit organizations and Bentley alumni and prior to graduating I won the organizations first annual product re-design contest. My final class at Bentley was a study abroad course in Japan that focused on the culture of international business. It was a fantastic experience and is also where I met my significant other Katie, so it is well worth mentioning.
With the completion of my M.S. degree (and MBA) I decided that I wanted to pursue my Ph.D. in Human Factors Engineering so that I could position myself on the forefront of the field and acquire the skills to design and evaluate complex systems that push the limits of human capabilities (e.g., nuclear power plant control systems, military/commercial air and sea vessels, decision support systems, etc.). I began attending the State University of New York, University at Buffalo (UB) in fall of 2008 and I ambitiously expect to graduate during the summer of 2012. My research has focused on visualizing uncertainty, decision support systems, trust in automation, and extending human capabilities with the aid of information fusion systems. Much of my research has taken place within the domain of intelligence analysis; however, it is of course largely designed to be applicable to other domains as well. My research has been presented at various industry and academic conferences and has also been published in various scholarly journals. Additionally, I am currently serving as the lead author drafting a book chapter focused on human factors engineering for distributed data fusion systems to be published by CRC Press. In my third year at UB, I was part of a team which was awarded top prize in Auburn Engineers’ annual Ergonomic Design Competition for our ergonomic evaluation and recommendations focused on the demarkation (i.e., painting the lines) of football fields.
Finally, in addition to my prior work and educational experience I have been an active member of a number of professional and academic organizations which are as follows:
Professional:
IIE – Institute of Industrial Engineers (Member, 2005-Current | Boston Chapter VP, 2007-2008)
UPA – Usability Professionals Association (Member, 2006-Current)
HFES – Human Factors & Ergonomics Society (Member, 2006-Current)
IDSA – Industrial Designers of America (Member, 2006-Current)
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (Member, 2010-Current)
Former Academic Leadership Roles:
hFIDO – Bentley Human Factors in Information Design Organization (Founder & Director of Testing & Assessment, 2006-2008)
GSA – Bentley Graduate Student Association (Senior Vice President & Director of Operations, 2007-2008)
Northeastern University Chapter of Alpha Pi Mu (Vice President, 2005-2006)
Northeastern University Chapter of IIE (Student Member, 2003-2006)
Want the personal experience? Connect with me directly via my vast social network…
