About Me
I am first generation American. My father came to the USA as a 8 year old from Europe (Austria) in 1940. He was born in Vienna, Austria and like many people during World War 2 had life disrupted. He was forced to leave Austria as a 6 year old in 1938 with my grandparents, finding their way to Normandy in France, then to Paris, then to the South of France and eventually through Spain and Portugal (and then on a freighter) to the United States where the family like so many others at the time started over (first in Brooklyn, New York) and then eventually in Mamaroneck, New York where my grandparents started a Five & Dime Store (my grandfather had a Men’s Clothing store in Vienna before the war so he knew retail) where they began to build a new life for the family. My Dad started Kindergarten with his twin brother and older sister speaking virtually no English (they knew German and French). Their home was as one would expect given they had started over. Modest, warm, and safe. It was a very comfortable place as I remember it (my grandparents lived there into the 1960’s), full of love and music(both grandparents played the piano). My grandparents were really kind and living to the grandchildren but I believe pretty tough and demanding on their children, prioritizing education and not tolerating too much “American fun.” My Dad never looked backwards and his parents gave all three kids a shot at the American dream. His sister went on to the Eastman School of Music and became a concert pianist, his brother a psychologist and professor at the University of California Berkeley, and my Dad went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after serving in the US Army in Korea, building a nearly 40-year career at the same company eventually becoming President of their largest business. My Dad’s sister introduced him to my Mother at the Eastman School of Music where they were both students. My Mother was also a pianist. She was born in Montreal, Canada. Her father was a successful businessman in Montreal and she led a fairly typical life there with her family immigrating from England to Canada after World War 1. My Mother has taught music her entire life and had a big influence in our household. In her late 80’s now, she has two grand pianos in her living room and still plays four-hand piano with her friends and starts every day playing.
My parents got married in 1957 and I was born in Redwood City, California outside of San Francisco (my Dad’s job had taken them to CA). We lived there for about a year and then moved East to New Jersey (where my sister was born). I have many fond memories of our time in New Jersey. We lived in a town called Berkeley Heights which is about 30 miles West of Manhattan and at the time maybe had about 10,000 people living there. We lived a pretty typical life in a comfortable neighborhood where the kids all played in the front yards, walked to school, and hung out. My sister had a tough go of things as a young child because she was born prematurely and had cerebral palsy. My parents focused a ton of energy on helping my sister confront and overcome her disabilities. And amazingly she did, after a number of difficult surgeries and wearing leg braces for her first 5 years. Today, she is an incredibly talented Cellist today having gone to the Juilliard School of Music in NYC and the New England Conservatory of Music and played with Yo-Yo Ma (one of the world’s greatest cellists) in a master class, Boston Chamber Orchestra, Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. She has just retired from the University of Vermont where she was teaching cello and spending time in the mountains skiing and running.
I grew up a pretty independent kid with probably more degrees of freedom than I should have had, but with a healthy fear of the consequences especially with my Dad who did not suffer foolishness very easily (I think a function of his childhood). This kept some of my independence in check. As a kid in NJ, I was always outside playing sports and hanging out with my friends. My dad liked to play tennis on the weekends and I can remember being on the court at the high school being his ball boy. In the summer, all the parents got together outside in the neighborhood and hung out. By today’s standard it all seemed way more social and open. I formed my team alliances during this time becoming a NY Jets (American Football), NY Mets (Baseball), NY Rangers (Hockey), and NY Knicks(Basketball) fan. Most of these affiliations were a function of the team’s winning (Mets, Jets, Knicks) with the exception of the NY Rangers. My dad was a huge ice hockey fan (as was my Mom being Canadian) so my affiliation aligned with his (as we would always listen to the games on the radio). To my Mom’s chagrin, I have been a lifelong NY Rangers fan as was my Dad.
Despite being only 30 miles outside NY City, we lived in a pretty hilly, green area with lakes and reservoirs within easy access. My Mom and Dad used to take us to those lakes in the winter where they taught us how to skate, first on double runners and then on real skates. I have always loved skating and played hockey right into my early 30’s. My Dad also taught us how to ski. Being Austrian, he and my grandparents all skied. My Dad, his sister and his brother were all on the National Ski Patrol in high school (they did this work in order to ski for free). My sister and I became excellent skiers over time. My Mom did not really like to ski, but endured the annual ski vacations we took because it was great family time. They eventually bought a house in Vermont which is still in the family and is the place my sister and I still go today with our extended family.
In 1969, we moved to Connecticut (CT) as my Dad got transferred. While not in the same house, this is the area where my mother still lives today (54 years later). As I mentioned, my Dad worked at the same company his entire career and the move to CT was a big career move for him. We moved to Connecticut when I was in 4th grade and I graduated from Staples High School in 1978. Westport was an incredible town to spend the next 8 years of my life. I made lifelong friends there and met a broader group of people there than I would have in our smaller town in New Jersey. Westport is a commuter town (on the train line to NYC). As a result, Westport was more affluent and more culturally diverse, with art galleries and an off-broadway playhouse where actors from NYC would summer and perform. The public school system in Westport is one of the best in the country which is part of the reason my parents picked this place for us to live. The other big attraction was the fact that the town was on the Connecticut shoreline (so there were public beaches, golf courses, sports facilities) within a few miles from where we lived. My Dad always wanted to sail, and he bought a small day sailboat that we moored at the public marina (and as a result I learned to sail on Long Island Sound).
Our whole family thrived in Westport. I was very involved with sports, playing hockey and soccer (which I played in high school on the state championship team). My sister and I were also very involved in music (my Mom’s influence). I played clarinet in band and orchestra and I became an all-state clarinetist (which was a cool thing). My sister and I both sang in Choir and a small acapella singing group called the Orpheneans. My sister and I were also all-state singers. The music opened up all kinds of opportunities for us to travel and perform (the singing group toured Poland in 1976 which was an incredible learning experience for me). And became a career for my sister. For me it was a passion (the singing, not the Clarinet) that carried forward to college.
Obviously, I was also doing well in school. While I enjoyed the arts, my real competency was in math and science. I really loved the natural sciences and had built my own weather station at home to track the weather and the storms that often hit the southern Connecticut coast. I was (and still am) a weather geek. I applied to Cornell University my senior year early decision and got in. I applied as an Engineer (following my Dad’s footsteps) and studied Operations Research & Industrial Engineering (OR&IE) in the College of Engineering at Cornell. My peers in civil, chemical, and electrical engineering called this major “Imaginary Engineering” poking fun at the fact that this was a pretty narrow field focused on mathematical modeling of manufacturing systems. We were using early computer programming languages (fortran, cobol, PLC-1) to figure out how to optimize material handling and usage in factories or how to optimize services industry flows using queuing theory (banking, hospitality, quick service restaurants).
Aside from working my tail off at Cornell, I played all kinds of intramural sports, club Ice Hockey, auditioned and was accepted into the Cornell University Glee Club (one of the oldest male singing groups in the United States) and auditioned and was accepted into a subset of the Glee Club called The Hangovers (a 13 person male acapella singing group). While I became a Vice President of the Glee Club, the activity that occupied the majority of my time outside of my school work was The Hangovers. We produced three record albums (literally records at the time), performed every weekend at University events, traveled to different schools to perform, and made a ton of money (at least by my standard at the time). We also created and launched a jamboree for other schools to attend called Fall Tonic (which today still happens every Halloween at Cornell, 42 years later). I became a huge Cornell Ice Hockey fan while there (or as they are called, a member of the “Lynah Faithful”) and still to this day go to games (occasionally dragging my kids and their boyfriends/girlfriends to the games).
I graduated Cornell in 1982 and started my career quite unintentionally in consumer goods. I had a number of different offers coming out of Cornell, but picked my first job based on proximity to Cornell (where my girlfriend at the time was entering Law School). I received an offer from Procter & Gamble (P&G) to work in their papermill in Northeast Pennsylvania swinging shift as a supervisor on one of the seven papermaking machines in this factory. I did not know anything about papermaking or what it meant to swing on a 7-day southern swing shift but I still took the job because P&G was a great company and I was close to where I wanted to be. As it turns out, the experience in the factory (for two years in two different jobs) was one of the most formative in my career. I learned a ton about myself, what I knew and what I did not know, how dependent I was going to be in my career on others' support, and how necessary it was to respect all the different roles in a manufacturing/business system given the inter dependencies). This early experience set in motion the career layed out in my resume (those subsequent years can be found there).
After three years at P&G (two in Pennsylvania and one in Cincinnati), I went back to business school to get my MBA. While I have dedicated very little space to Harvard Business School (HBS) in this bio, there is no doubt my degree from HBS in 1987 opened up new doors and perhaps accelerated my career. I continued to pursue my interest outside of class at HBS singing, play intramural sports with my section mates, and playing ice hockey in a graduate school league in the New England area as a member of the Harvard Business School Blades. I loved my time in Boston and at Harvard but you will not see me wax poetic about my time there because Harvard is Cornell’s arch rival (at least Cornellians think of Harvard that way and I am at my heart a Cornellian). Hence the emotion and passion is focused on the Hill in Ithaca, New York (home of Cornell University) and not at the finishing school in Boston.
Beyond work, the joy in my life has been the love, partnership and respect my wife Trisha and I have for each other and the pride we have in the creation of our family. My wife and I were both single parents when we met nearly 22 years ago (I had four kids under the age of 7 and she had three under the age of 5). We brought our two families together at those ages and have built an incredible life together. The children grew up with each other from that age onward and think of each other as siblings (irrespective of which side they started on). They are all (but one) living away from home now but are back all the time. All of the kids are charting their own paths. Five of the seven are out working and two are in graduate school. The oldest was 30 in May (wow shocking, he was 7 when we started; where has the time gone) and the youngest is 23. No one is married yet, but lots of boyfriends and girlfriends and soon enough the next chapter will begin for us as grandparents which I know we are both looking forward to.