Who I Am, Before What I'd Do

I was born in Duluth, Minnesota, and grew up on a Wisconsin lake outside towns smaller than one of our GE lectures. My graduating class at St. Croix High School had twenty students; I finished second, which in a class of twenty teaches you something about humility. I couldn't play sports after a car accident broke my back, so I learned to lead in other ways: I talked the school into adding a period to the day so students could take four years of a foreign language, started the Spanish club, and founded a Future Business Leaders of America chapter. I have been organizing things ever since.

Summers, I worked the counter at the town True Value hardware store, which is where I first studied how people actually make decisions. After Harvard I joined Procter & Gamble in Minneapolis, then moved home to Duluth as a business banker, approving loans the old-fashioned way: character first, spreadsheet second. A master's degree carried me to Silicon Valley and Sun Microsystems, where I worked with Eric Schmidt, Ed Zander, and Scott McNealy — and left before the dot-com crash, which I count as an early judgment call that aged well. The University of Minnesota gave me my Ph.D. in Human Resources and Industrial Relations, and nineteen years ago I chose Dominguez Hills. Every year since, our students have proven it was the best professional decision I ever made.

Sherri and I raised our kids in Carson and San Pedro, where I serve on the Neighborhood Council because I believe you fix things by showing up. My loyalties are complicated only in sports: Twins and Vikings by birth, Dodgers and Kings by three decades of residence, and every October tests my character. The formerly Minneapolis, now Los Angeles Lakers are the one easy call.

What Students Say

These are from letters supporting my 2025 Wang Family Excellence Award nomination. They matter more to me than any line on a CV.

Things I'm Proud Of (That Don't Fit on a CV)

A staff colleague's venture I mentored at our Innovation Incubator, El Machete hot sauce, has been featured on Ellen and in a Super Bowl commercial, hailed by LA Weekly as possibly the next great L.A. hot sauce, and has grown to roughly $1 million in revenues. The incubator has now mentored 40+ ventures and recently hosted the Sunstone awards, putting $200,000 into CSU student companies. The CSU Job Shadow Program I pioneered with Joan Torne in 2020 now serves students across multiple campuses. This December I'll serve on the Fulbright National Screening Committee, reading applications from students chasing the kind of chance a kid from a class of twenty once got. And former students now teach at CSUDH and across the country, which is the only kind of legacy that compounds.

Why This Matters for the Senate

A colleague asked me a fair question when I decided to run: why you, and why now? My answer: judge me by the doors I've opened. My proudest work has always been building benches, not occupying chairs — mentoring the student who becomes the professor, the lecturer who becomes the senator, the committee member who becomes the chair. When I stepped down from my statewide seat this spring, I helped mentor our two new Statewide Senators, Dr. Laura Talamante and Dr. Keisha Paxton, because a seat handed forward well is worth more than a seat held long. That is exactly what I intend to do with this role, including a constitutional change so the general faculty elect more of their leaders, and deliberate development of committee Chairs and Vice Chairs as the Senate's next generation. Experience should be a ladder we lower, not a wall we defend.

Come by my office hours and tell me your story. I'll bring the coffee.