Tell us about yourself and your background.
Going to the Raikes School was a fluke that changed the course of my life. I realize now that when I was deciding where to go to college, I was scared to leave Lincoln, where I was born and raised. I applied to be a chemical engineering student everywhere exceptUNL. I only chose computer engineering to get into the Raikes School because it seemed like such an amazing deal. Even though I’d been obsessed with technology since middle school, I’d convinced myself that because I hadn’t learned how to program in high school, I shouldn’t try to learn in college. I’m glad I didn’t listen to that voice too closely. College was the most fun I’ve ever had, thanks to all of you that I met and lived with at the Raikes School.
I interned at Speedway Motors after freshman year, then at Microsoft the following two summers. After graduating in 2014, I took the summer off, took a couple of road trips, then moved to Seattle to work for Microsoft.
Tell us about your current position, what drew you to that company and role.
I’m a program manager at Microsoft for a new Office app that’s going to be announced soon. I help lead a team of designers, engineers, researchers, and other PMs to take a super ambiguous problem – “How can we help teams better think, plan, and create together in this new hybrid work world?” – and turn it into working code, little by little. I have my 19-year-old college self’s absolute dream job: the UX PM for a major new app from a big tech company! And yet on a lot of days, it just feels like a job to me, and one that I don’t always feel quite settled in. It helps to reconnect with my college self and acknowledge the progress I’ve made in ten years.
Microsoft has been an incredible place to start a career. It didn’t start out that way: I was miserable in my first two teams after joining full-time. Thanks to some great mentors and managers looking out for me, I stuck around and found a “third time’s the charm” team where I really learned how to be an effective PM and have fun in the process. In seven years at Microsoft, I’ve worked on five different teams, from cloud monitoring tools to new hardware programming languages. The freedom to move around and try different kinds of work, without having to change companies, has been a boon for me.
In 2020, I joined the board of GLEAM, Microsoft’s LGBTQIA+ employee resource group. (It’s my “gay job,” in addition to my “day job.”) In this role, I help organize GLEAM chapters in Microsoft business groups and in different regions around the world where Microsoft operates, plus lunches and other events for the GLEAM Washington chapter. Some of the most rewarding moments of my job all-up are seeing new employees meet each other at these lunches or hearing from trans employees who’ve recently transitioned that this community makes them feel like they belong in tech.
Tell us about your experiences with the Raikes School since graduating.
Ha! From September 2014 to February 2020, I was living with friends from the Raikes School: Nate Watley, Adam Prusa, Veronica Telega, Brendan Smith, Mike Varilek, and Andrew Gaspar. Different combinations of us lived in four different rental houses in the Bellevue and Medina suburbs of Seattle. I explained my living situation to my manager once, and he laughed, “That’s a commune! You’re sharing all the food and rent…that’s called a commune!” They’re a second family to me, and I learned so much from them. Shout out to Nate for teaching me how to cook!
If you could give one piece of advice to current students, what would it be?
Learn about all the “people stuff,” not just science, technology, engineering, math, and business. Learn about psychology, sociology, race, gender, sexuality, history, economics, politics, and all the other majors you immediately ruled out when you were applying for college. You can be a quantitative, structured nerd about all these areas, too!
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I’d love to meet more of you. Follow me on Twitter (@numberbycolors), Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and reach out!
