Dennis
was born and raised in Gary, IN, a humble steel
town near Chicago blessed with incredible sunsets.
At first chance he escaped to cleaner air a hundred
miles to the south to attend Purdue University
where he eventually got a degree in math / computer
science after an unfortunate detour to South East
Asia where he served in the Air Force doing the
ultimate oxymoron, military intelligence.
After graduation he worked various software development
jobs in the Connecticut aerospace industry. A
fortuitous layoff and divorce sent him westward
to Silicon Valley. While doing enough software
consulting jobs to keep the rent paid, he formed
a rock / oldies / country band that played every
honky-tonk and biker bar between Gilroy and San
Francisco. He’d already gotten the travel bug
after a 4-month backpack trip around Europe, so
when the band broke up after 8 years he took a
trek around South America for 5 months to brush
up on his Spanish.
He then threw in with some consultant buddies
to start a medical information software company,
and learned that having your own company just
meant you can work 24/7 and still not get everything
done. When the company was bought out by their
largest client, Dennis took that opportunity to
move to San Francisco and do consulting work at
Wells Fargo, while continuing his travel habit
in between projects. When the inevitable out-sourcing
and subsequent layoff happened in 2003 – the same
year he ran his first, and undoubtedly last, San
Francisco Marathon – he decided to try something
completely different and became a project manager
at CitiScape.
Dennis had been a long-standing Board President
at a CitiScape-managed HOA and liked what he saw
there, so it was a natural transition. He enjoys
the challenges of learning new things, seeing
projects completed, working with talented people,
and just being outside a lot during daylight hours.
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