Brett the Professional

First off, if you are so inclined, this narrative version of my work history may be eschewed in favor of a more condensed version here: my resume, or also here: My LinkedIn Profile.  Otherwise, strap yourself in and get prepared to read a real nail-biter filled with twists, turns, secondary and maybe tertiary twists, and also a possible celebrity appearance!

Early days

My first few jobs were pretty standard - retail, more retail, some additional retail, and then for two glorious summers, ditch digging.  I can say without reservation that those two ditch-emptying summers comprised some of the best work experiences I've ever had.  After high school graduation, two close friends and I managed to find seasonal work at a local parks department, with duties ranging from, yes, digging irrigation ditches to emptying trash cans around town to basically every aspect of landscaping you can imagine.  I got my first taste of what real autonomy feels like, issued a beater pickup truck and a to-do list at 6:30 AM each day.  Working outside is an amazing thing.  Even the most mundane, tedious tasks are lightened with a bit of sunshine and fresh air.  That being said, doing a trash run in July on a 100 degree day is a less than stellar olfactory experience.  

not so early days

After the parks department job, I had a couple additional forays into the retail world to supplement my new collegiate lifestyle but I spent most of my days either in the engineering building at class, in the engineering building doing homework, or in the engineering building looking out windows at gleeful non-engineering students as they passed by.  Occasionally, this prompted bouts of existential crisis, wondering why I wasn't reading Proust in the Norlin Quad and waxing philosophic.  Then, I would remember that math is cool, and space travel is even cooler, and I was on my way to becoming an actual rocket scientist.  I learned how to dissect systems, to break a problem down to smaller and smaller elements.  Sure, it made homework easier, but it wasn't until years later that I understood how valuable that insight would be to me and my career.  I began to develop a taste for seeing the big picture, and using that to act in line with big picture goals.  

even less early days and today

After college, I spent some time trying to find that first "real job."  I did a bit of temp work just to make some money, and ultimately felt unfulfilled with an job that wasn't challenging.  It was soon after this that I found that "real job."  I began as a Quality Engineer at Intertech Plastics in Denver.  Within six months, I had moved into a Project Engineer role before settling into Systems Engineer most recently.  

My first days at Intertech  - updating quality documents and tracking down QA data sheets for transcription into spreadsheets and further analysis wasn't exactly what I'd envisioned for an engineer's job.  I felt a bit blind in the situation, I wanted that big picture view of the business but I didn't know where to get it or whom to ask for guidance.  As I grew more comfortable in the culture of the company and my role shifted into the more active Project Engineer, I began to glimpse bits and pieces of the whole I sought.  I learned how to do industrial product design in SolidWorks.  I became an expert in how to design plastic items for manufacture.  I managed customer relationships, quoted new business, and maintained our ERP system.  As time passed,I found better ways to do my work, faster and more reliable than what I was taught.  This started to leave me with a handful of hours each week to explore other departments and functions in the company.  I began to lend myself out as support in other areas, to understand and help solve their problems in addition to my own.  I began to stitch the glimpsed pieces into a Frankenstein's Monster understanding of business.  

The first couple of years at Intertech, we'd been operating in an outdated ERP solution that was difficult to learn and operate, and virtually impossible to navigate.  Even so, I began to learn how to manage pieces of an ERP system, and understand how they represented the reality of manufacturing and production.  Then, in late 2008, we adopted a new ERP solution, namely IQMS.  This new software implementation would end up being the best thing that happened to both the company and to me.

seeing the big picture

I was recruited by our IT manager at the time to help him with the recently approved IQMS implementation process.  Once again, my nerdy past paid off!  The hours I had spent breaking and fixing (and consequently re-breaking) my computers growing up gave me a level of computer literacy that others in the organization lacked, so I was invited to assist in the implementation.  During the following six months, I gained and used access to all aspects of our system.  I learned how to pull data with simple SQL queries, and to write some fairly complex Crystal Reports.  I became the Data Guy.  All of the questions I had over the years I could now dive in and answer.  I quickly turned my patchwork understanding of the company into a comprehensive one.  I conceived of and developed measures of company success we'd never used before, and used that information to help shift operational focus in a way that hadn't been done before (in our company anyway).  I would later come to find out that the metrics I developed were commonly known to many others in manufacturing, but nevertheless, I took a great amount of pride in having been able to create them from the ground up.  

today

More time passed, as it tends to do, and the IT manager with whom I had cooperatively learned and implemented IQMS left the company for another opportunity, providing me with one in turn.  I turned from a pseudo-IT/project engineer/design engineer into... well pretty much the same thing, just with a snazzier title.  I assumed the mantle of the IT manager and rolled it into the rest of my professional identity to become Systems Engineer.  I'd taken the once part-time role of helping to solve others' problems and turned it into a living.  I am the resident expert in all things electronic, and what I don't yet understand, I can learn.  I have learned how a business operates from top to bottom, and I have become adept at finding opportunities to streamline those operations.  I have assembled a set of skills which I consider formidable, and still seek to add others to the list.  

My Future

All of my career has led up to a single crystallizing realization, which I had quite recently.  I like what I do.  I like finding issues and solving them.  I like helping others to learn how to improve things on their own.  I also realized something else:  I would be much happier if I applied my abilities toward a cause more dear to my heart, rather than simply trying to raise the bottom line.  I've always had a personal passion for the ideals of sustainability - recycling, reduction, reuse, renewables, basically all the RE's.  I've spent over a decade gaining and refining skills, looking for a noble service in which to employ them.  I'm ready to use them in service of the causes of sustainability and environmental responsibility.  I want to go home every day feeling like I've done my part to improve the world at large.  

the celebrity

Oh, right, I'd almost forgotten!  One time, Hillary Clinton came to visit our manufacturing facility and I got to meet her.  That was really cool.