What do we Do?

Greyson is now at the age where he frequently asks us a) "are you going to work?" and b) "do you have to go to work?". I remember my neighbor, Dawn, telling me that time would come and she was right...it's not easy when your child asks you not to go.

What we've explained to Grey is that we work so that he can eat his favorite foods, sleep in a warm bed and get an occasional Matchbox car from Target. Internally, Mike is thinking about childcare, sports equipment, tuition, and any other investment that might reap benefits for us sometime down the road. Anyway, it's a conversation that any family with one or more working parents has to have with their children at some point. What I can tell you is that we're working to do all of the above but also because we get some satisfaction (most of the time) out of it as well. Many of you have asked what exactly it is that we do so this post is a high-level attempt to explain it.

Mike works for Salient Surgical Technologies, a medical device company based in New Hampshire that manufactures the Aquamantys, a device that controls blood loss during hip, knee, spine and organ surgeries. The other question he frequently gets is "how did you get into med device?", which can be difficult if you don't have a background in biology and/or an ancillary industry. When Mike graduated from Ripon, he was hired by Sysco Foods. In a nutshell, he sold food to restaurants and he did pretty well at it and in his 2nd year, won a trip to St. Lucia. On that trip, we met John Lauer and his girlfriend Maria. John was a Regional Manager for Stryker Medical. We made fast friends with them and when we got home, John called Mike and asked if he'd be interested in interviewing for a position with Stryker, selling capital equipment to hospitals. It goes to show you that the old adage is true, "it's who you know". 8 or so years later, John left Stryker and then called Mike and asked him to come and work for him again, at Salient. So, Mike sells the Aquamantys to orthopedic surgeons. He's often in scrubs, in the OR, observing and assisting with his device (yes, sales guys really do assist). He's usually out of the house really early in the morning and back in his home office in the afternoon. When we transferred to Seattle, Salient had a position for him too. I'm thankful for his schedule because it allows him to relieve our nanny and spend some time with Greyson before I get home.

So, what do I do? And why the heck did we move to Seattle for it? Most of you know that I've worked for the same company, Allegis Group, since I graduated. I started out as a Technical Recruiter for Aerotek, the Engineering division. I've held a number of different roles with Aerotek- recruiting, sales, training and management and in 2004, was asked to transition to Allegis Group Services (AGS), a new division at the time, to manage a new client. AGS has grown into an entity that is much larger than when I transitioned so I won't bore you with the specifics but our core business is workforce management which basically means that Fortune 1000+ companies that spend a lot of money on contingent labor will outsource the end-to-end functions to us. We manage everything from the suppliers who do the recruiting to the process of getting them paid. AGS was awarded the Microsoft account in early 2008 and I was offered the opportunity to run the program. I manage a large team, most of them as fresh-faced as I was when I first came out of college. I spend most of the week in my office with the team but when I'm not there, I'm at Microsoft which is what you might picture- HUGE, very environmentally friendly, very casual and pretty cool. The main campus has 12 restaurants, a state-of-the-art soccer field, an art gallery and retail stores. It literally looks like a mall.

So, that's what we do when we're not at home laughing at Greyson who puts a baseball shaped Easter basket on his head and calls it a Babushka. Last night at bedtime, he had a 30 minute conversation with an imaginary friend named "Tyson". Who needs to watch TV when you can turn on the baby monitor and listen to the comedy channel?

Happy 4th of July to all of our friends and family. We're on a plane bright and early tomorrow morning with no responsibility to surgeons or Microsoft for a week. Before I sign off, I just wanted to share a pic of Mike & Grey from this past weekend. Grey is wearing a Green Bay Packer sweatshirt that was Mike's when we was a boy. I love that Mike's mom saved it. The sleeves are a little long but it's adorable on him. Enjoy!