After graduating from Franklin, I jumped around a lot and attended various colleges. I started out at LACC, then transferred to UC Santa Barbara and then to UCLA. I failed out of UCLA in 66 and moved to San Pedro to attend Harbor Junior college to make up credits. I returned to UCLA in 1967 and graduated in June 1968 with a BA in Sociology.
After graduating from UCLA, I went into the Peace Corps. I ended up living in mud huts and drilling water wells for the “green revolution” in north India. I returned to LA in the fall of 1971 after a year in Thailand teaching English. Not knowing what I wanted to do, I returned to school at Cal State LA to study history and also worked for a year with the Catholic Youth Organization in Boyle Heights as a community worker. But I was restless. After getting my secondary teaching credential in history I decided I didn't like teaching so I took a job in Nicaragua organizing communities for rural health clinics.
After a couple of years in the jungles of Nicaragua's eastern coast, I moved to Vermont where I did a Masters in Development Management— basically in the field of managing economic development projects in the “third world”. I met my future wife in Vermont, Darcy Fay in 1976.
In 1977, Darcy and I went to Washington DC to live. I worked on a technology transfer project to Latin American countries for several years with the Department of Commerce. Then I moved to the World Bank for three years working on issues of technology transfer for developing countries. In 1984, I began work with a NGO managing technology-focused economic development projects in 6 Asian countries. There was lots of travel back and forth between the US and Asia since I was based in Washington DC. Darcy and I were married in 1988 after living together for nearly 12 years. We have no children by choice.
In 1990 we moved from Washington DC to Sri Lanka to work on another development project. We were there for 3 ½ years and then moved back to California. We lived in Fillmore (near Santa Paula) during 1993. In early 1994 we moved to Tanzania (East Africa) to manage another project. Soon after the embassy bombing in 1999, we moved back to Washington DC. We bought a condo in Alexandria VA (near Washington DC). In 2001, we moved again. This time we moved to Zimbabwe (Southern Africa) to manage another USAID program. We have lots of nice memories of our nearly 10 years living and working in Africa.
Darcy and I returned to Alexandria VA in the summer 2005. My work still revolves around international development work. I am now working for a large NGO in Washington DC mainly on issues related to small business development and microfinance. I’m looking for another assignment overseas by the fall of 2010, when my current job ends.
My interests remain rather eclectic. I enjoy reading philosophy, history and biography. I play tennis twice a week and enjoy fly fishing for trout when I get a chance. While working in the DC area, I managed to finally complete a Ph.D. in human and organizational systems after more than a decade of demanding study coupled with a fair amount of active procrastination. Darcy completed her doctoral work too, a year earlier.