Profit Is Good

BACKGROUND

EDUCATION

I graduated from the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1976 and a Master of Business Administration degree in 1994. I also completed individual graduate level courses in Distribution Engineering (Iowa State University), Direct Current Transmission (Iowa State University), Strategic Marketing Management (Harvard University) and Managerial Economics (University of Phoenix) as well as the four week Utility Management Executive Program at the University of Michigan.

EXPERIENCE

I started my career with Iowa-Illinois Gas and Electric Company in 1974 in Iowa City. Transfers and promotions took me to Davenport, Fort Dodge, back to Iowa City, Ottumwa, Rock Island, and back to Davenport. During that period I progressed from an engineer to vice president and an officer of the company at Iowa-Illinois. Functional responsibilities during that time included engineering, operations, marketing, industrial relations, energy conservation, purchasing, information technology and human resources.

Iowa-Illinois merged with Iowa Power and Iowa Public Service in 1995 to form MidAmerican Energy. From 1995 until 1999 I held the titles of vice president, chief information officer and senior vice president involving various functional areas including information technology, human resources, marketing and customer service.

Following a successful merger with CalEnergy in 1999 to form an international energy company (retaining the MidAmerican name), I made the difficult decision to leave the energy business after almost 25 years to try some new ventures. I did some consulting work with small companies including a couple of years working with Apogee Interactive, an Atlanta software and training company. In 2001, I launched Abbey Road Home Theater, a service business specializing in the calibration of high end video and audio equipment.

During my business career I taught several in-house technical courses along with training in various high voltage and natural gas technical areas. I also taught vocational computer courses at Kirkwood Community College in both Iowa City and Cedar Rapids and an information systems course in the University of Iowa MBA program. I started as an adjunct at DMACC in August, 2004 and became full time in January, 2005. I still do occasional home theater work.