My Life in Public Service. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)
"I'm for parkville"
I’ve been associated with public service for my entire life. I was born at Fort Knox - dad was an Army lieutenant preparing for his deployment to Vietnam and mom was a nurse at Ireland Army Hospital. When dad came home from his deployment, he went to work in the steel industry in the Chicago area and mom worked at the local hospital in the ER. My parents modeled a commitment to service as both an obligation we take on as a citizen and an honorable way to make a living.
I attended college at West Point, where grit got me through school more than academic ability. I served initially at Fort Riley, KS, where I fell in love with Soldiering and with my future wife, Tara, whose family helped establish Parkville in the 1840s. Over the course of a 25-year Army career, we returned to Parkville for holidays and three tours of duty at Fort Leavenworth. I filled sandbags on Main Street in 1993 during the great flood, and all three of my kids learned to walk in our home off of FF Highway. When I retired from the Army in 2015, we settled in a new home in Riss Lake and embarked on a new journey of service as Mayor Sly James’ Chief Innovation Officer in Kansas City.
I applied what I learned in the Army in terms of strategy, collaboration, planning and operations as a local government professional. I realized that the interpersonal relationships among city departmental leaders were similar to the staff interactions I saw as a member of General Petraeus’ staff in Baghdad in 2008/2009.
As part of Mayor James’ team, we made Kansas City the Smartest City in America by 2017, generated over $20 Million in federal funding for technology projects in the city. We built a streetcar starter line that increased the value of the downtown exponentially. I earned an Edison Award for “Community Disruption” and was named one of GovTech’s “Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers” in 2018.
In 2019, I opened B2 Civic Solutions in my Parkville Attic. My mission was to take what I learned in Kansas City’s City Hall and share it with other mayors, city managers, chief technology officers and community leaders. I helped found the Cities Today Institute, a 400-member city collaborative focused on making communities more efficient and more responsive to resident needs. When Covid hit, I designed and led the vaccine distribution system in Wyandotte County that became the model for the region and the state. I met and engaged with several of the technology providers that are now deployed in Parkville through my work at B2 and CTI.