Brett Lovins

Bio? Well... I guess my path continues to be a series of accidents. Lots of hard work and luck and curiosity and caring seem to be my fuel. And things have gone well. Also, like many, my life has many distinct chapters. Out of college, I spent 10 years as a touring musician. Amazing chapter, a great way to spend my 20s and early 30s. This overlapped with an interest in this new thing that was coming along called "the Internet." Another chapter had me building websites. And another teaching hundreds of hours of classroom and in-home/office computer classes. Then my wife rekindled a childhood interest in horses, we closed down our quiet little life and chased her dreams of becoming an accredited horse trainer. The company/program she was studying with hired me to... wait for it... lead social media marketing for their company. My team grew an online community in all the major platforms of the time and one we built. I left that job after a few years and a horse training customer that works for Cisco swooped me up. I worked for 8 years as a Community Manager in Learning@Cisco as part of Cisco's certification business. Once again, building community and caring. Then popped over to where I am now 4 years ago to be a part of an engineering group in ONEx, working on the Chief of Staff team. My focus is trying to understand and improve our (already awesome) culture. I'm "Dare to Lead" trained through a Brené Brown trainer. And I'm a Crucial Conversations accredited instructor. I personally delivered Crucial Conversations training to nearly 400 colleagues a couple years ago, an awesome experience. That's it. A crooked path and an odd collection of skills. My dad is a retired high school art teacher, my mom a retired public school nurse and my grandpa was a locomotive engineer, shoveling coal into steam engines when he was a younger man. I'm always trying to do what Grandpa Carl asked me 10,000 times: "You gonna do your best?" Although not a voracious reader, a few books that have rocked me include: Delivering Happiness, The Lean Startup, Culture Code, Dare to Lead, The Thank You Economy and Tribal Leadership. Addendum: I got sober in May of 2013 after years of alcoholism and substance abuse. I'm one of many, non-unique people who used to struggle with it and am now a "recovery advocate". Please check out my podcast on addiction and recovery here: https://recoveryconversations.buzzsprout.com