Where did you work? How did you get here?

[exploited]

[Aaron]

[Boris Johnson]

[Showboat]

[Showboat]

[PoS]

[Dylan]

[G5000]

[Kane]

Ho fo sho.

[Professor]

My current job is VP of a medium-sized insurance and project/program management company. Basically, we handle any of the insurance requirements (health, workers comp, dental, property, casualty, vehicle, etc.) for large, self-insured entities, like governments (cities, states, counties) and large companies. We also manage large government-funded programs where the government gives a boat-load of money to someone (usually a state or county) for some type of event (like a disaster) and they need someone to manage it. For instance, we're handling a lot of the Federal dollars in the NE as a result of Sandy.

How did I get here? Went to a small Catholic HS and graduated in the middle 50% with a 3.4GPA. Went to Univ of Texas on a full-paid scholarship in Electrical Engineering. Found out I hated it, switched majors, lost scholarship, transferred to SLU (2nd largest school in LA). During college, was a waiter in Disney World, police officer, operating room attendant, retail clerk, and kitchen cook. Graduated and went to work as overnight security for a hotel in New Orleans. For 5 years, worked my way from overnight security to oversee all the hotel rooms for large conventions, meetings, and festivals. During this time, went back to school at night and got my MBA.

Katrina hit New Orleans, and had to find new job. Got a job at a hospital doing some patient satisfaction work (very similar to what you do in a hotel and making guests happy). A subset of that job was government relations (lobbying). I found out that I loved lobbying so much that I spent the next 3 years developing that part of my job. Eventually, convinced Administration to make me my own department, with me as the Director. After that for 2 more years, I decided I wanted to manage all the contracts for the hospital. So, I took on that responsibility, working for the General Counsel.

Over the next 6 months, figured out that the GC was a royal douche. Yelled at the female employees until they cried. Intimidated just about everyone. Didn't know his own job, much less mine, but also didn't let thaty stop him from telling me how to do it. Had a personal vindetta against me because of my parents (they both used to work at the hospital). Anyway, after 6 months, he told me he was reassigning me to quality compliance. I told him I didn't want to do it. We argued. I quit - on the spot. Then, I went to our CEO (whom I thought was a friend - heck, he used to give me Christmas presents when I was younger!) to explain what happened. He treated me like a common employee (had HR sit in on the meeting), which was highly offensive. The meeting went from "I want you to be an impartial judge of right/wrong" to "I'm outta here, and if you don't give me 3 months of pay, plus continue my benefits and other perks, I will be glad to call the Ethics board and let them know of some of the crap that you authorized".

I went straight from that job to this one.