Foreign Experience

I’ve had the privilege to speak several languages and interact with people from several cultures during my life, such as:

Spanish-    I learned to speak fluent Spanish during my time in Costa Rica with the U.S Peace Corps.  The language helped me develop relationships with the local residents of Orosi, my town south of Cartago, and motivate them to support my projects.

Also, I spoke Spanish during my time at the Dodge Truck division of Chrysler Motors.  The position required frequent trips to Mexico to review Dodge Truck plants in Mexico City and Saltillo.  Executives wanted me to roam the plant and speak to auto workers in their native language to uncover issues on the assembly line.  Then I would report back to the executives who would use the report to allocate resources to the issues I uncovered.  Finally, I taught Spanish to students in elementary schools and college classrooms.

Russian- When I wrote “The Immigrant Express,” I learned basic Russian to make it easier to communicate and develop trust with Russian-speaking American citizens connected to the real estate scheme.  While it wasn’t extensive in any way, many Russian-speakers respected the effort to communicate with them and trusted that I would give their stories the same respect I had given them.

Portuguese-  I learned basic Portuguese when I took a class at Wisconsin.  I found it similar to Spanish, but very different.

Chinese-    I wanted to get an understanding of a non-Romance language.  So I studied basic Chinese during my time at Wisconsin.

Proudest Achievements

There are many things that define a person that don’t show up on a resume.  Below are three accomplishments that were more than the fulfillment of a project.

— The Orosi Athletic Complex:  While in the Peace Corps, I created a youth group and built a basketball court that still exists today.  I grew tired of hearing local youth complain about what was missing in their town.  So I told them, all in Spanish, that we would do something about it.  I created the youth group and held meetings weekly in my small house.  I taught them how to elect officials and then how to communicate the project to the community.  But I told them that there was one rule: we wouldn’t ask residents for any money.  There were other groups that asked for money and failed to show any results, I said.  Instead, we would ask them for their time and ask local business leaders for the materials to create the project.  Once the town witnessed the energy of my youth group and watched the project take shape, I knew they would want to support it in whatever way they could.  They did.  Today, the project has been around for more than 20 years.

— The Immigrant Express:  This was the title of the multi-award winning story I wrote in Daytona Beach.  It started with a simple assignment to write a high school graduation article.  But I thought those articles were boring.  I needed an interesting personal story and found one in a student whose parents had emigrated from Russia after the 1990 Revolution.  During a conversation with the student’s mother, she asked me if I knew why so many Russian-speaking residents lived in the small Florida town of Palm Coast.  What followed was a conversation that led to an eight-month investigation into a massive real estate operation.  Companies were using a Pyramid-style scheme to prey upon non-native English speakers and charge them four to six times more than native English speakers for property and home construction.   After publication, my story cost Centex Homes $1.3 million in self-imposed restitution to more than 200 families identified in the scheme.  It was difficult to turn down all the presents affected families wanted to give me to show their appreciation.

— Death Knell:  I wrote this novel based on two things that occurred in the Peace Corps.  During my time, I was elected to the local committee that decided how to handle issues for Peace Corps volunteers across Costa Rica.  It was during those meetings that I understood the intense pressure on government managers to stay within their budgets.  Later that week, I read an article about how much it costs the states to administer the death penalty.  I realized it would save billions of dollars if criminals died without the state being involved.  Then citizens could punish their criminals and save money.  But how would you pass a policy like that in modern America?  Then I wondered what would happen if a criminal got involved in such a program accidentally.

The novel answers those two questions and shows how our decisions can have unintended consequences.  You can imagine my disappointment when I heard about “The Hunger Games” as I had come up with this concept a decade before in a foreign country.  That said, my novel has resonated with the few people who have read it, including a retired literary agent who thought he would read a few pages as a favor and read the entire novel.

Communications Experience

During my life, I’ve been successful in a variety of communication fields and styles.  Here are a few examples of my successes in three particular fields:

WRITING-  I worked as a professional journalist for 10 years.  In that time, I wrote several notable stories that educated and entertained readers about the unknown activities in their communities.  The most prominent was the Immigrant Express, a story that uncovered a real estate scheme where brokers used job advertisements   to lure non-native English speakers into expensive real estate deals.  The brokers would claim that the jobs were to sell real estate and that it would be easier to sell real estate and houses if they bought real estate and houses themselves.  Then the brokers would charge them four to six times more for the land and housing than native English speakers.

But I wrote other stories that broke new ground.  I was the first journalist in the country to do a state-by-state comparison of compensation for school board members.  I reported on the Florida recount for the 2000 Presidential election as well as personal stories about the families of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.  I covered a  local marine research facility and turned routine research about how scientists study dead marine animals to learn how to make artificial human limbs and a sunscreen that protects against jellyfish stings into front page stories.  There was even a time when I called the Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami to understand how an addict could smuggle heroin into a drug treatment facility to give context to a story about an overdose victim.

DIGITAL CONTENT-    During my work as a journalist, I heard many people talk about how the Internet was changing communication.  But no one seemed to understand exactly how it was changing it.  My desire to uncover the answer led to my doctoral study at the University of Wisconsin, where I earned one of the few degrees in the world on the influence of digital and social media content on society.  I’ve used that knowledge to create a new strategy for how to use digital and social media content to motivate and mobilize users to take action to support a product, candidate or cause.  Also, I used it to create a new theory to discuss one of the most significant issues in that process.  Since then, I’ve used the new strategy to design successful digital campaigns for a variety of individuals, corporations and causes.

PUBLIC SPEAKING-      I’ve helped more than 1,000 people improve their public speaking skills and comfort in public settings.  During my doctoral study, I taught public speaking and speech writing for five years and became the most popular speech instructor in the entire university.  I set records for the highest student evaluations in our department and received several grateful e-mails and letters from students who praised my classes for their effectiveness at making them professional public speakers.

More than that, I was a life coach when I lived in London, England.  During that time, I would counsel my participants in during daily phone calls and weekly meetings.  Other than my team, I would serve to coach the other 120 participants in the program when needed.