I learned to speak engineer, operations, and leadership.
I studied audio engineering at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences, then moved to Nashville for a six-month internship at Welcome to 1979, a studio built around vintage analog gear with a sister shop that restored tape machines.
I stayed on as Chris Mara's assistant and as house assistant. Under Chris, and under Steve Sadler and Randy Blevins at Blevins Audio, I learned to fix, maintain, and refurbish American-made MCI consoles and tape machines: reading schematics, signal flow, soldering, calibration. I sat in sessions with Jeremy Ferguson while he cut tracks for Turbo Fruits' Echo Kid, and I learned what a room full of artists needs the operation to do around them.
Later I became chief audio engineer at Quaver Music, a small startup building a fully digital music curriculum for K-8 schools. I built the network storage that held the audio and video, pioneered the on-set and live-audio workflows, and handled voiceover, sound design for animation, and webinars. I researched public-domain works the company could record royalty-free. Late in that run, I mixed The Protomen's live Queen cover album, A Night of Queen, at Welcome to 1979, and my name is on the record.
Then came the family relocation that brought me to Seattle. Nashville's studio scene was behind me; I spent about a year as head engineer at El Corazon running live sound there. That's when I stopped building the infrastructure that powers other people's art, and started running the technology itself.