Project Manager

I was born in Hollis Queens NYC (home of the famous Run DMC) and lived in that area of NYC until I went to college – which also wound up being in NYC, just a different borough (Columbia University in Manhattan).  So, yes, I really like rap music – especially “old school” rap – and I did know how to break dance.  My break dancing days are officially over.

I became an expert NYC Subway rider at the age of 13 as a result of my 1 hour 45 minute commute each way from my home in Queens to high school in Manhattan (Regis High School) – eventually mastering the art of jumping from the platform into the space between subway cars (with a school bag full of text books) and riding to school that way to avoid the madness of trying to cram into the subway car as the doors were closing.  In hindsight, I’m very fortunate I survived those years.

Growing up, I always wanted to be a police officer and my Mom wanted me to be a doctor, but wound up going down the path of electrical engineering.  When push came to shove, I couldn’t take the sight of blood, dreaded the idea of an additional 4+ years of school (and debt) and was more interested in designing/building a spaceship or a fighter jet than in being a cop or a doc.  Alas, I never actually did get a hard-core engineering job.  I got recruited by Andersen Consulting (now known as Accenture) right out of college.

The rest is history as I wound up getting assigned to a project to help a global pharmaceutical company redesign their clinical trial execution and management processes and technologies. At the time (early 1990’s), they still used multi part carbon copy case report forms, double data entry, and OCR that never really worked well.  I’ve been almost 100% focused on the pharmaceutical industry ever since – working across many areas such as clinical research, field sales automation/CRM, drug safety, Real World Data research, and regulatory submissions.

I’ve had many jobs growing up that I remember fondly and that might surprise people – so I’ll share them now.  Examples include newspaper boy, selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners, selling Cutco knives, delivering pizza, washing dishes by hand in a busy Italian restaurant, driving for a local car service (lots of airport runs), shoveling snow,  raking leaves, and mowing lawns.  My favorite of these was landscaping (for reasons I’ll share via conversation with anyone who’s interested).

I flew on the Concorde several times in the early 1990’s when I was working on that global pharmaceutical project mentioned above.  That was very cool.

I am into cars – primarily old muscle cars from the late 60’s and early 70’s, but I do like modern sports cars too.  I’ve been able to keep myself from spending too much money on these vices – for the most part.

At the top of my priority list is my 25-year-old son Alexander.  He has significant developmental delays and cognitive impairment due to an unfortunate birth injury.  While his vocabulary is very limited, his ability to bring smiles to people’s faces and demonstrate pure love and innocence is infinite!  Truth be told, I often wonder if my lovely partner Kim only stays with me because of how lovable Alexander is!   The end 😊