I think I am a verb

Bringing profound empathy to the practices of management and parenting, and humor, cleverness and first-principles thinking to inventing, designing, making and building, I’d like to share more of my thoughts, on my own terms. Here’s where you can find my collected works!

I have a strong desire to figure things out. I want to know how it works, what it’s made of, where it came from, how it will continue, and why it exists at all.

I exist because of my parents, and my kids, William and Malcolm, exist because of me and my beloved spouse Suzanne. We enjoy regular adventures around California where we live and love the outdoors. But we also enjoy emotional adventures resulting from our family’s fine admixture of neurodivergences. I think of these as “neurospice”, adding flavor and depth to the family’s interactions. Considering these dynamics has led me to consider Parenting Coaching as an opportunity to help everyone.

I spend most of my hobby time thinking of weird configurations of plastic that might be useful, designing them with CAD software, then printing them with my 3d printers. Then, with artifact in hand, I enjoy seeing how wrong I was and iterating rapidly. Often it’s very simple: a new teapot lid or a pocket for the remote control. But sometimes, I find myself crossing over into true inventor territory; my latest is a pie crust press that will, I hope, help me manage crumbly gluten-free pie crust dough more easily and smoothly.

I have celiac disease, and therefore I cook most of my own food to ensure that it’s properly gluten free. Fortunately, I love cooking and baking and so we eat well in Casa Moncrieff. I miss restaurants but I do not miss the gluten.

Professionally, I’ve spent the past 10 years as a manager in DevOps, SRE and similar engineering disciplines, and have worked in Telecom, Aerospace, Fintech and Social Media. I love hardware and software, but I love the people who fuse both into revolutionary products the best. I am trained in Electrical Engineering, which at the time I was attending the University of Toronto included the most technical electives of any of the programs. Consequently, I was able to feed my curiosity by taking courses in programming, internetworking, radio systems, complex variable calculus (which I do not remember but my mind was blown at the time!), bioelectricity, and many other topics.

I’ve also dabbled in events planning, workshop creation, process design, program management and coaching.

Need a team managed and supported to be the best engineers they can be? I’m here to help! Confused by what your kids are doing? Maybe I can help shine a light! Want to learn basic CAD and 3d printing skills? I’ve got you covered!