Welcome to my professional personal website. Below, I share a little bit about my career experience and accomplishments. I also have pages listing my areas of expertise, links to news articles where I was interviewed, a list of my professional memberships and volunteer involvement, a link to Hard Hat HR (my blog), and how to contact me.
Currently, I’m the HR Director for sister companies, Merrill Gardens and Pillar Properties in Seattle, WA. I’m in my element where I get to deliver strategic Human Resources leadership to our rapidly growing workforce of over 2000 Team Members located throughout our portfolio of properties in Washington, California, Nevada, Arizona, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. I also have the honor of supervising three direct reports and an outsourced HR company.
I did a brief stint with SurveyGizmo in Boulder, CO as their Director of People and Culture where I was hired to develop, implement, and manage a state-of-the-art HR function to coincide and support their planned transition from start up to high growth. They weren’t fully ready or prepared for the high level strategic HR I was hired to deliver so we amicably parted ways after seven months.
In 2013 I started a side gig and launched Hard Hat HR which evolved into an independent HR Consulting firm, H2HR Consulting Group. I provided high quality cost effective HR support for a number of start up, small, and early stage organizations in the Denver metro area. H2HR Consulting Group is currently dormant but I continue to blog and podcast intermittently on HR topics at hardhathr.com.
I was able to really learn about effective consulting during my time at Employers Council in Denver, CO and an HR Consultant. I assisted clients in many different industries with some pretty unique and interesting HR projects or long-term assignments in the areas of HR function development, HR management, HRIS development, compliance audits, recruiting, staffing, consulting, etc. I had a fantastic portfolio of wonderful clients that included a major airline, a global biotech company, several health care organizations, manufacturing & construction companies, engineering firms, and energy companies.
In 2008 I completely changed careers and joined Ur-Energy, a publicly traded high-tech uranium mining company, as their HR Manager and worked my way up to became the Sr. Director of HR, IR/PR, and Administration. My mission was to build and manage the first ever HR function which I successfully accomplished. Sadly, the uranium mining and nuclear industries are experiencing serious economic difficulties and I was let go in a large Reduction in Force in 2016.
I spent the first 22 years of my career in the retail industry with a Fortune 100 department store chain where I advanced through the ranks of store management, human resources, and operations. My career progression ultimately lead to the role of General Manager where I was responsible for the management and operations of two branch stores. I lead both branch stores to the coveted “Store of the Year” award and was formally recognized as one of the top leaders in the company. I achieved this by building and developing a team of ~100 employees and managers, aligning them with the objectives of the company, and exceeding stretch financial and business goals.
Well that’s a quick summary of what I consider a fun, rewarding, and interesting career path.
My mission as an HR Professional is to help my company deliver consistently strong business results through our amazing people.
I believe an excellent HR organization understands that organizations are only as good as their workforce allows them to be and, ultimately, every organization succeeds of fails because of its people.