From the Factory Floor to the Front of the Room
From 1988 to 2003, I worked in design, manufacturing, and quality engineering. I learned how things actually get built — the tolerances, the failures, the workarounds, and the moments when a production line goes down because someone didn't know what they were supposed to know.
Then in 2003, I walked into a CAD classroom holding a 1933 textbook. I put it down and never picked it up again.
Instead I built curriculum around Legos, K'Nex roller coasters, Rubik's Cubes, and balsa wood bridges — things students could touch, take apart, measure, and understand before I asked them to draw them. I accepted students other teachers had written off. I made one promise to every one of them: I'll meet you where you are if you show up ready to go somewhere.
That worked. So I kept going — from the classroom into corporate training, from corporate training to Toyota, from Toyota to OSHA, and now to every organization with a training gap that nobody has had the courage to name yet.