BACKGROUND, EDUCATION and EXPERIENCE
I grew up in San Leandro, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I attended public school. Upon graduating from high school, I attended the University of California where I earned a BA in English Literature. After graduating I moved to the Sonoma Valley where I worked for the next ten years as a Special Education Teacher. I attended Sonoma State College, studied education and psychology, and earned teaching credentials in Elementary education and teaching children with severe learning disabilities.
Next, I moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where my then-wife and I purchased a 19th century brick townhouse in Boston's Back Bay. We lived on the second floor and rented out the rest. It needed a lot of work, and I put a lot of effort into repairs and renovations. My first year in Boston I taught an alternative class (resource room) for high school students. I then worked as a Behavior Analyst for a community mental health center. There, I worked at the Masters level, consulting with staff at various hospitals, nursing homes, group homes and schools, as well as with families and individual clients with behavior issues. In 1982 I decided to do something quite different, and enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
In 1984, now single, I returned to California and embarked on a career in business analysis and information automation. From there I moved to Boulder, Colorado, where I studied database design and programming and attended the University of Colorado. This effort culminated in a position with Oracle Corporation. Then I moved to California's Silicon Valley, where I consulted to major high-tech corporations around the area as an independent contractor.
These were exciting times in IT. Many companies were re-working their information technology and paying top dollar for new systems, and people with my skills were in demand. However, all of that came to a halt in 2001. A "perfect storm" consisting of the dot-com melt-down, offshore outsourcing and 9/11 resulted in a catastrophic downturn in my client base. Business looked internally and outside the U.S. for the resources they needed for their suddenly limited IT project needs.
In 2004 I moved to Whidbey Island, Washington. My Dad had recently died and my Mom needed help. So this was a good time for us to come north. Since then I have worked at a combination of teaching and technical work.
Most recently I founded HyperLocal Community Classifieds, a startup currently stuck in the funding stage.
HCC will deliver networked classified advertising and local community information, managed by centrally-employed local editors, to vetted subscribers -- all under an umbrella of social responsibility. At least a third of our income will be returned to the community to support good works. As a for-profit we can offer significant investor returns by targeting a currently un-occupied niche in the online advertising industry. Alternatively, operating as a non-profit would maximize the benefits we offer our communities.
So far I have found that investors prefer to fund growth, and not development. We need funding to develop the application. I have several large Facebook for-sale page administrators lined up to switch over to HCC. If we had the application, we wouldn't need the funding!
For more information, please visit www.hyperlocalcommunityclassifieds.org.
I grew up in San Leandro, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I attended public school. Upon graduating from high school, I attended the University of California where I earned a BA in English Literature. After graduating I moved to the Sonoma Valley where I worked for the next ten years as a Special Education Teacher. I attended Sonoma State College, studied education and psychology, and earned teaching credentials in Elementary education and teaching children with severe learning disabilities.
Next, I moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where my then-wife and I purchased a 19th century brick townhouse in Boston's Back Bay. We lived on the second floor and rented out the rest. It needed a lot of work, and I put a lot of effort into repairs and renovations. My first year in Boston I taught an alternative class (resource room) for high school students. I then worked as a Behavior Analyst for a community mental health center. There, I worked at the Masters level, consulting with staff at various hospitals, nursing homes, group homes and schools, as well as with families and individual clients with behavior issues. In 1982 I decided to do something quite different, and enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
In 1984, now single, I returned to California and embarked on a career in business analysis and information automation. From there I moved to Boulder, Colorado, where I studied database design and programming and attended the University of Colorado. This effort culminated in a position with Oracle Corporation. Then I moved to California's Silicon Valley, where I consulted to major high-tech corporations around the area as an independent contractor.
These were exciting times in IT. Many companies were re-working their information technology and paying top dollar for new systems, and people with my skills were in demand. However, all of that came to a halt in 2001. A "perfect storm" consisting of the dot-com melt-down, offshore outsourcing and 9/11 resulted in a catastrophic downturn in my client base. Business looked internally and outside the U.S. for the resources they needed for their suddenly limited IT project needs.
In 2004 I moved to Whidbey Island, Washington. My Dad had recently died and my Mom needed help. So this was a good time for us to come north. Since then I have worked at a combination of teaching and technical work.
Most recently I founded HyperLocal Community Classifieds, a startup currently stuck in the funding stage.
HCC will deliver networked classified advertising and local community information, managed by centrally-employed local editors, to vetted subscribers -- all under an umbrella of social responsibility. At least a third of our income will be returned to the community to support good works. As a for-profit we can offer significant investor returns by targeting a currently un-occupied niche in the online advertising industry. Alternatively, operating as a non-profit would maximize the benefits we offer our communities.
So far I have found that investors prefer to fund growth, and not development. We need funding to develop the application. I have several large Facebook for-sale page administrators lined up to switch over to HCC. If we had the application, we wouldn't need the funding!
For more information, please visit www.hyperlocalcommunityclassifieds.org.