July 3, 2026
25 Years, No Straight Lines
From an Arby's counter to managing IT for a medical-device company - 25 years, and not a straight line among them.
The US is celebrating its 250th birthday this week, and while I do not have quite that many years under my belt, it got me thinking about a smaller milestone of my own: 2026 marks 25 years since I first entered the workforce.
I started at 15 as a cashier at Arby’s and worked my way up to shift manager. A short, unhappy stint as a welder at Kubota taught me what I did not want. Then came Domino’s, where I climbed from delivery driver to store manager.
And I failed. Badly.
Not because I was incapable, but because I did not own the role. I showed up, worked, went through the motions, and tried to be everyone’s friend instead of actually leading anyone. The store suffered for it, and eventually I was demoted. It took me a long time to understand that lesson.
At 22, I moved to New Zealand on my own. For several years, my career was stagnant. Some of that was circumstance. Some of it was me. I worked in sales, retail, customer service, and account management. My customers usually liked me, but I was bored, unfulfilled, and doing the bare minimum to get by.
Things started to shift at Fisher & Paykel, where I moved into a more technical support role troubleshooting appliance issues for customers in the US. Something finally clicked. I enjoyed the problem-solving, soaked up the knowledge, and started to feel like maybe I was good at something.
Around that time, a friend asked if I would consider a junior IT role. I laughed it off at first. I was 31, comfortable, and finally in a role where I felt known and valued. Starting over felt ridiculous. But he kept nudging, and eventually I thought, “Why not?”
I joined Fraedom as an IT Support Technician, and for the first time in my career, I truly loved the work. The odd problems. The troubleshooting. Helping people get unstuck. The floor walks, tutorial videos, hopeless tech tips, and all the small moments where IT became less of a ticket queue and more of a relationship with the people around me.
I did not love the asset management paperwork quite as much. Sorry, Daniel and Nick.
But Fraedom gave me something I hadn’t really had before: confidence. A sense of worth. A feeling that I had found work where I could actually contribute.
After Fraedom was acquired by Visa, I came back as a System Engineer and helped support the transition into the Visa environment. Later, I moved across the world for the second time to become Visa’s Mac Experience Manager in Austin.
That role stretched me again. I learned a tremendous amount, but more importantly, I learned what it meant to own a role properly. Doreen pushed me to develop executive presence, think bigger, and lead with more intention.
Which brings me to now: in 2026, I am back in Georgia, working as the IT Support Manager for the US and Latin America at Artivion. That is not a sentence 15-year-old me, 22-year-old me, or even 31-year-old me would have known how to imagine.
I spent a lot of years feeling listless and without direction. There was no master plan. There were failures, false starts, boring jobs, lucky breaks, kind people, uncomfortable moves, and more than a few gentle nudges from my wife when I needed them most.
So thank you to everyone who has been part of the last 25 years. The people who gave me a chance, pushed me, taught me, challenged me, worked alongside me, or simply believed I could do more before I believed it myself.
And for anyone feeling a little listless right now: keep pushing forward. :)
Originally shared on LinkedIn - if you’d like to comment, that’s the place to do it.