CAREER 

      My paycheck career began after I graduated from high school in the summer of 1968. While pursuing my undergraduate degree, I worked odd jobs in discount department stores, a medical equipment manufacturing factory, and a coffee service.

     After college graduation, in the spring of 1973, I started as a property manager trainee for the Rockford Management and Development Company with aportfolio of properties that included apartment buildings, office buildings, two shopping plazas, and one amusement park. I acquired a New York State real estate salesperson license, which qualified me to sell or lease properties. After some time in the commercial office, I was transferred to the sales division, L. A. Grant Realty,  as a salesperson.

     Somewhat dissatisfied with residential real estate sales, I decided to enroll in the Master’s program at the School of Architecture and Environmental Design, SUNY at Buffalo. While there, I held the position of graduate assistant and teaching assistant. I did not finish my studies nor receive a degree.In the summer of 1976, I left the graduate program to seek full-time employment.

     With only one drafting course to my credit, I was hired as a draftsman in the engineering and maintenance department of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The department consisted of over 100 tradesmen engaged in repairs and maintenance of the downtown campus of the Institute, as well as designing and constructing small-scale renovation projects. During my tenure there, I became a member of the CSEA union.

     Late in 1978, I sought a better paying position. I was hired as a designer draftsman for a chemical engineering firm, Evaporator s. My duties included drawing plans of the equipment as well as the installations in existing chemical plants. Later, my employer trained me to program and run their software for simulating the process systems that we were selling. With one night school course in Fortran IV programming, I took over programming their existing software and modified it for specific customers. This required me to research the transport and thermodynamic properties of specific inorganic chemical solutions, inputting the data into multiple regression analysis, and then modifying the routines, subroutines, and main program to run an iterative process for minimizing the input of raw materials and energy as well as maximizing the output. This position required me to travel multiple times to the chemical corridor in Louisiana.A recession in the fall of 1983 resulted in the contraction of the chemical industry. Sales to Evaporator Technology halted and the company was shuttered.

     Between Thanksgiving of 1983 and March 1984, as sole breadwinner, I was laid off and entered the unemployment line. Over that period, I submitted over 90 resumes to various firms most of which were in the same position of cutback. In March 1984, I was hired by a technical services (temp) agency as a designer draftsman and assigned to the Buffalo office of Dresser-Rand Industries. This was a contingent/temporary assignment and there was constant churn with layoffs most months. Very early on, naïve to the operations of the company, I had made a misstep which was observed by the top supervisor of the office who told my immediate supervisor that I was fired. The immediate supervisor understood my naïveté and talked him out of executing that order. After a warning, I continued to work there for six full years while seeing many individuals come and go. For the first two years, my duties included working in the model shop where I made plastic mock-ups of large compressor installations. After a couple years, when computer aided drafting and design had matured to a certain level, plastic models were no longer necessary and complex drawings were made by computer. I then shifted to the installation group where I drew complete packages with the necessary equipment for large compressor stations such as those used on the Trans-Canada pipeline delivering natural gas from the Canadian Rockies to the eastern seaboard of Canada and the US.

     In the spring of 1990, I sought something with better compensation and growth. I was hired by the owner of Quackenbush Company Incorporated mechanical contractors, a construction firm specializing in HVAC and plumbing for commercial and institutional buildings as well as piping for industrial plants. The company had a small fabrication shop where they would put together piping and other small weldments for field construction work. The owner wanted to make it a separate cost center of the company which would operate as a separate cost center on a larger scale. Two major corporations had already established a business connection with Quackenbush and, with their help, our mutual business relationship grew. Over the next 15 years, the fabrication shop outgrew its original quarters and required renting additional manufacturing space. After years of dealing with temporary facilities, we decided to find a permanent home and purchased a much larger property. The main product was prefabricated piping modules fabricated off-site and placed on-site and offshore on oil platforms, oil refineries, and chemical manufacturing plants. The biggest product that we built was a module 14 wide by 12 foot high by 120 feet long, built in two parts, put on separate trucks, and shipped from Buffalo New York to the port of Los Angeles, bound for South Korea. From 1990 to 2005, much of U.S. manufacturing was moving offshore. Our division competed in manufacturing in the global marketplace with union labor. The machines we built have been installed on six continents and on the offshore platforms of seven seas. All this at a time when US manufacturing was offshoring.

     Early in 2005, personal family issues pressed on me and I could no longer continue to work. I resigned from the Quackenbush Company in February 2005 and took a sabbatical of several months before slowly reentering the work force. At first, I volunteered to work on a friend’s political campaign and began a career in freelance writing.

     In 2006 as I was beginning to receive checks as a freelance writer, I became an independent contractor for the environmental organization Buffalo Niagara  Waterkeeper. My first assignments were to do some communications work. Eventually my duties expanded to the point where worked in various positions such as communications, external affairs, and project manager. I wrote press releases and a newsletter, conducted public meetings, created their ecotour program (hikes, bikes, and paddles), and managed a 250+ volunteer corps. In 2012, as we were anticipating the arrival of grandchildren, my wife and I decided to retire. This was the end of my paycheck career and the beginning of a full-time career on boards of not for profits. At one point, I was president of three not-for-profits, one of which I co-founded. (See Board Service page.)

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"Popular lore tells us that genius is born, not made. Scientific research, on the other hand, reveals that true expertise is mainly the product of years of intense practice and dedicated coaching. Ordinary practice is not enough: To reach elite levels of performance, you need to constantly push yourself beyond your abilities and comfort level. Such discipline is the key to becoming an expert in all domains, including management and leadership."

"The Making of an Expert," Harvard Business Review