What is your favorite food and why? 
Wow, with so many good ones to choose from, it’s a tough call. Think I’ll have to go with pizza, though – there are just so many ways you can dress it up or down, and even when I’ve had it days in a row, I don’t think I’ve ever run into a situation where I haven’t been excited to have more.

What’s the best advice you ever received?
Another tough question with so many good examples throughout my life, but think I’ll go with “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” Probably what tips the scale is how I came across this – I was hiking in central Texas and found this written on a rock in a stream bed I was crossing. Too interesting a find not to have it float to the top of my best-advice list. I use it to help remind myself of all the different perspectives out there, and how mine is just one of many to consider as we all find our way.

Do you have any hobbies? 
Perhaps foreshadowed by the previous question, I like to get outside whenever I can. Whether biking, hiking or even just a walk around the block, outside time is definitely one of my favorites.

How did you get involved in technology transfer? 
Blind squirrel, nut??  Something like that. Mine is one of those cliché tech transfer stories of searching frantically for what I was “going to do” after grad school. I was fortunate enough to have received a fellowship that allowed for graduate students to participate in internships and then speak about them to the rest of the fellows. One seminar I attended was given by Victoria Sutton, now a colleague of mine at WARF, who talked about this field of technology transfer that I didn’t even know existed. From the first time I heard about it, though, I liked how much closer to commercialization it was, and that really resonated with my time as an engineer with BASF. It was that seminar that really got the tech transfer ball rolling in my head, and now I'm going on 13+ years in the field, and I’m still excited and intrigued by all we get to see and do. 

What do you like most about working with inventors and other tech transfer professionals?
Getting to work with the world’s experts on such a variety of topics has to be the highlight for me. Simply so many amazing folks are doing great research, and we as TTO professionals get to be some of the first people outside of the lab to hear about it – pretty neat stuff.

You did your undergraduate studies at UT Austin. What was the best thing about returning to Austin this year for the AUTM Annual Meeting? 
It had been more years than I care to think about since I’d been back to Austin, and the first thing I noticed off the bat was just how different it was, and how much it had grown. There was nothing taller than the capital when I was there, and in the interim they’ve truly embraced “everything is bigger in Texas!”  Along with soaking in all the new sites, though, it was also really nice to walk down to campus and see some old haunts like the Jester dormitories and the Tower, and to simply let some good memories of undergrad days float back by.    

What does AUTM membership have to offer that you can’t get from other organizations?
I’m sure I’m not alone here when I say it’s the people and the connections. This profession is filled with so many genuinely nice folks, and it has such an air of collegiality about it. We all know how hard it is to get technology out there, and knowing this, I think we are all there to support and help each other as much as we can, rather than thinking of each other as competitiors. AUTM meetings provide an amazing venue to forge and strengthen these ties that we come to rely on daily when back in our home offices.

The Central Region Meeting is right around the corner. What’s your favorite memory from a past region meeting?
This is another tough question where it’s hard to pick one from so many good options. If I had to single one out, though, I think I have to go with the off-site reception in St. Louis. We always like to have a chance to get outside of the conference venue with the Central Meeting, and we have what we hope is another great location lined up in the Kemper Museum in Kansas City this summer. But the City Museum in St. Louis was something else. It describes itself as “weirdly wonderful” and “an all-ages architectural playground” – and I gotta say it lived up to all of this and more. We had a great time, and fortunately also somehow managed to just narrowly avoid any serious injuries on the human hamster wheel.