I grew up outside of Toronto to a family of dutch immigrant dairy farmers. My Dad worked in the construction industry and taught us the value of a dollar. He’d say, “ If you want something, you’ll have to earn it.” My Mom worked in women’s fashion, and I’d help her steam fresh inventory and put it on the floor, so I’ve been around retail most of my life. I fell in love with technology at an early age and saw its role in our lives. As kids, we obsessed over video games, our Commodore 64, and our first ‘real’ computer was an AST with an internet port. We collected AOL CDs from our neighbors to get it for free.

 The single thing that defines me is snowboarding. Without it, I would have never known what having a genuine passion was like and wouldn’t have taken that feeling into my work. It taught me about grit, passion + perseverance, and bouncing back from failure. (There weren’t any snowboard instructors in 1992).  Most importantly, it took me to Vancouver where I fell in love with my wife and we have two incredible daughters, Giselle (9) and Stella (11).

Without snowboarding, I wouldn’t ’t have moved to Vancouver, Portland, or California to follow my passion and certainly wouldn’t have met my wonderful wife.

I studied Marketing at the University of British Columbia and then to the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University to pursue an MBA in General Management.

The first seven years of my career were about building my marketing ‘bag of tricks’ at Gatorade and TBWA. The next 15 years focused on digital transformation at Best Buy, Nike, and Zwift.