>> I went to university in Maryland, College Park.
I graduated in '96.
I had two careers after college and then I kind of fell serendipitously into executive search.
I don't know many people that graduate college and say I want to be, you know, a headhunter.
Perhaps there are, I just, I certainly wasn't one of those individuals.
But when I graduated it was the late 90s and it was the era of high tech and AOL
and all these technology companies.
So I somehow, someway got linked up with a couple of former AOL guys and gals who were,
they were two or three years older than me, that had done very well for themselves
because their employees number, you know, 300 or 400 within AOL before it was even called AOL.
So I worked for a small startup web development firm and rode that up to about 40, 50 employees
and then when the economy just went away, so did this firm.
So I was looking to do something a little bit more stable than that.
I worked for a business process outsourcing firm in Washington DC.
And this was about 2000 or 2001.
And I was a sales manager for the mid-Atlantic region for this particular organization.
And my company in DC was three floors below a very large executive search firm.
So I was not on their radar screen.
I was way too young in my career to even be considered
for anything that they might be working on.
But I thought geez, I've been doing kind of the sales and marketing thing,
I have this psychology background, and perhaps executive search would be an interesting blend
of my interests and skills.
And it was more of a hunch that I stalked the powers that be at this particular search firm
and I ended up at this particular firm as a senior associate.
And within about two years I was promoted to, two and a half years, as partner.
And I was at that particular search firm for another three, three and a half years
as a partner and then I've been at DHR for three and a half years now.