Husband

My wife and I have been together for 17 wonderful years. With each year we are still uncovering new depths of our relationship as we continue to learn and discover ourselves. She is the mother of my child, the keeper of my household, my partner on the journey and my best friend. And where GTD comes up short, she has a great memory for things I said I will do. I would not be half the person I am today without her love and the innumerous ways in which she supports me.

Father

In 2015, when he was two and a half years old, we brought home our adopted son from Seoul, South Korea. Since then life has never been the same. Although, in fairness, that’s the thing about life, it rarely ever stays the same regardless of how many kids you have (or if you have any at all).

Volunteer at Dharma Refuge

Back when I first started managing people, I quickly discovered meditation. Then I read a book (seems a lot of my stories start this way) and that book led me to Dharma Refuge. One Wednesday night in the spring of 2017, I showed up to join a meditation practice with other people. That led to a multi-year streak where I rarely missed a single Wednesday, which got interrupted in Spring of 2020 when... a lot of things got interrupted.

These days, I serve in a number of roles at Dharma Refuge which include membership committee member, A/V team member and as President of the Board.

Director of Software Engineering

I earn a living by building effective software engineering teams that create software others are willing to pay for. While my understanding of the management role and its nuances continues to evolve, my day-to-day responsibilities involve continuously working with others to define a path for our organization as well as create a culture that balances the needs of the business with well-being and continuing growth of our teams.

Leader

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" -- Ghandi

To me, leadership is about not being a passive passenger or a bystander as the world around you happens. It is the discovery of your own voice, your own agency and your own ability to imagine a better world for yourself, your family, your company, your community and anyone else you come in contact with. It is the continuous drive and passion to start with your imagination and do what it takes (as long as you are doing what's right for everyone) to make that a reality. It is the ability to organize, energize and inspire people around you and support those people to discover and unlock their own leader.

Pet Owner

The one on the left is my girl, Selene, named after Greek goddess of the moon. The other one is McCloud named after one of my favorite TV and movie characters, whom sadly kids these days have never heard of (spelling had to be altered for obvious reasons). We also have a cat, Sheldon (aka "Shelly") who found us rather than the other way around. And a cockatiel, Gosha

Recovering Software Engineer

I'm going to date myself a bit here and I am okay with that. My coding adventures started off with BASIC on 8088 PC whose only means of persistent storage was a double-density 5 ¼" floppy disk which could fit a whopping 360 KB.

While my professional career path has taken me away from directly writing code, programming is an outlet that I have not let go off completely... for now. On occasion I still very much enjoy sitting for hours and hours, to the detriment of spending time with family, building something. It is one of the whys behind this website as it gives me a chance to continue to play around with things.

Family Chef

Cooking is my other creative outlet which has a side benefit of putting delicious (not always, but I try) meals on the table and helping keep our restaurant budget in check. One of my most cherished kitchen utensils is my carbon steel wok which makes great stir fries. We try to eat plenty of greens and veggies, but once in a while we will enjoy and nice, thick rib eye cooked to a perfect medium rare.

Home Owner & Wanna-Be Woodworker

Seeing how a lot of my personal and professional outlets involve me sitting on my rump in front of glowing screens (got up to 4 at one point), I picked up this hobby as a way to disconnect and rather focus on physical objects that I could produce with my hands.

Like many others, being inspired by multitude of YouTube videos and Reddit posts, one of my long-term dreams is to get more into woodworking. For now many of my projects involve building things around the house like shelves that fit weird spaces or a server rack enclosure (pictured here) that is now holding all of the home server/network equipment. (Many thanks to Tom who builds stuff for providing designs and write-up to follow)

... and a lot more not listed here

There are plenty of other roles/responsibilities that I haven’t mentioned here but overall these slides are a high-level introduction to Dennis. Collectively, they (begin to) define who I am… today, but one of the humbling experiences of my own journey, and which I hope to capture somewhere within this website, has been the realization of how dynamic our lives are and how quickly our identities and a sense of self can change because what we do and are responsible for today does not always stay the same tomorrow.