How I got here

Mike Rosello, Senior Technology Executive, Retail Services business of Alliance Data Corp. has been successful in growing his career into his current position. Along the way, he's had plenty of opportunities and fascinating experiences. He shares some of his journey in this interview.

From his hometown in Chennai, India, to school in the remote deserts of Rajasthan, to fast-paced sunny California, John Janakiraman has had a chance to see and experience some dramatically different landscapes and cultures first-hand over the course of his own career path. The biggest difference between attending school at the edge of the inhospitable Great Indian Desert, and Los Angeles, wasn't the culture, the available technology, or even the languages, though, John says the biggest difference was the food!

Venkat found success right out of the gate with some high-profile dotcom companies, and says that maintaining good connections with people throughout your career is the key to continuing advancement. Through the years, he's seen it all and from two countries -- and has gained some fascinating insights into advancing up the career ladder, creating an entrepreneurial company, and being an early pioneer in developing software solutions for electronic discovery.

Anne Marie Schar went from being an English and History teacher, to being a network administrator. She found her current career path through a very unusual and lucky turn of events, first becoming a network admin in a school simply because she "knew where the 'on' switch was on the server."

Is there any such thing as job stability in the investment banking world any more? Was there ever? The nature of the business is that it is constantly changing and evolving -- so there is no stability, and none is expected. Nonetheless, Paul Okura made an enjoyable career out of banking, until he decided to go in a completely different direction and purchase a CMIT franchise, launching his own company offering IT services and support. Moving from banking executive to franchise owner is a major change, but Paul has excelled at it, and now has a successful franchise, where he enjoys leveraging his expertise in so many areas to make a successful small business work.

Rick Treese, Chief Technology Officer at TheMarkets.com, didn't always know he would combine his interests in technology and finance. In high school at the well-known High School of Performing Arts, on which the motion picture Fame was based, Rick's main interest was music. But it turned out that Rick was as fascinated with finance and banking as he was with music, and went to work for Goldman Sachs after college.

Kenyon Kluge jumped from a large IT company to a startup to combine his love of technology with his love of motorcycles, and now is the Director of Electrical Engineering at Zero Motorcycles, a Scotts Valley, California manufacturer of gas-free electric motorcycles.

Going from being a political lobbyist to an IT consultant was a decidedly unusual turn in Mike Valuck’s career, but it was one that satisfied his desire for something rational amidst the often irrational and unpredictable quagmire of statehouse politics. But his solid background in public administration turned out to be just the thing for a career as a consultant, where communicating, convincing, and relaying information are key parts of the job.

Lance Watson has done a little bit of everything -- from working on a fishing boat in the Florida Keys, to digging ditches and delivering pizzas. His job at a company installing and troubleshooting voicemail systems took him to a project in the Arctic Circle, where he went ice fishing and ate whale meat with an Inuit named Harvey. It's been a long and interesting road, to say the least. Always "the computer guy" to his friends and family, but never making a career out of it until a lucky meeting one day took him on the path to becoming an e-discovery and digital forensics expert, Lance's career goal was to have a job that gave him stories to tell - and he's got plenty.

Ken Kucera grew up on a farm in rural Nebraska, doing various farming related activities such as cow milking, harvesting and putting up hay -- but he quickly decided that farming was not a long-term career path for him, so he studied IT in college.

Eric Ottaway didn't start out as an IT'er but he quickly discovered that getting experience in IT and how it could help business not only would build his IT skills, but would ultimately pave the way to a General Manager's position at the Brooklyn Brewery. Ottaway credits his work in IT as a "door opener" to understanding key drivers behind business processes that enable him today as a General Manager to run a highly effective brewery operation.