My story is one of resourcefulness, perseverance and overcoming difficult obstacles. I was born and raised in Chicago to two hard working, middle-class, Assyrian (Middle-Eastern Christian) parents (Robert and Alma) who met at Lake View Presbyterian Church. This is the same church where I was baptized. I attended Chicago public schools including graduating from Mather High School.

One example of my resourcefulness and perseverance was my drive to transform myself from a fat, weak, high school freshman into an excellent athlete during my senior year including making the varsity basketball team. Another example was, during a trip to Los Angeles in 1979 to investigate business schools, a supposed friend failed to pick me up from the airport. Despite a lack of money, I didn’t give up. Instead, I found ways to achieve both of my major goals at the time: 1) working out at Bruce Lee’s dojo in Carson, California and 2) visiting the UCLA’s campus!

I have always been a natural recruiter and innate judge of talent. For example, at North Park College, where I attended my first year of college (before transferring to DePaul to complete my undergraduate education), I uncovered and recruited several top basketball players to help my intramural team almost defeat (lost by one point) the intramural champions of previous year.

Throughout my life I have possessed excellent sensitivity and intuition, which have enabled me to quickly and properly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in others including myself. On the positive side, I am passionate, compassionate, introspective, bright, outgoing, assertive, playful and youthful with a strong sense of adventure. Unfortunately, not all of those traits are natural to me. Instead, due to my life-long drive to improve and reinvent myself, I have willed myself into a more assertive leader able to overcome my weaknesses. For example, I was able to overcame a sever case of dyslexia, which impeded my reading abilities throughout my life, to achieve an MBA at the prestigious Duke University Fuqua School of Business in 1982. Another example occurred in my mid-40’s when I pushed myself to overcome a propensity towards obesity in order to reshape a fat, 244 pound body into a sleek and trim 203 pound one. In the process I became one of the top 5% of performers in the very strenuous and demanding Bulldog Boot Camp. This is a particularly important achievement considering most other top performers were 15 or more years younger than I!

I gained my excellent research abilities and long-term memory skills from my mother, who went back to school to achieve her undergraduate degree at the age of 50! These skills have helped me to overcome my dyslexia and to quickly acquire and retain an understanding of new and difficult fields. For example, I went from no knowledge to professional-level competency in Final Cut Pro (profession-level) video editing at the age of 50. This is versus most others who have difficulty learning this skill at 20-22 years of age. This is part of my constant push to reinvent and better myself including becoming an accomplished film and video producer later in life.

I also have always had an outstanding, macro-level understanding of technology, which I gained from my father who was an R&D chemist. This aided me in my quick grasp of many new technology fields. This also allowed me to quickly ascertain important trends, facts and personnel in those fields. For example, last year I founded a research group devoted to exploring the potential and possibilities for time travel. Despite many PhD-level scientists in the group, I have been able to recruit key expert lecturers and lead meaningful discussions. I have even received many compliments from organizers of other scientific groups who attended our meetings. For example, Robb Murray, said, “This is a very stimulating group and you are a great leader who orchestrates an excellent discussion.”

My recruiting history started by accident three years after gaining my MBA in 1985. While leading an import car venture, I joined a recruiting firm with the goal of working there a short time, learning how to recruit, departing and then recruiting and building a nationwide repair network to assist my business. Unfortunately, my car business folded due to the quick change in the dollar to Deutschmark ratio. Fortunately, I quickly established myself as the top technical recruiter at this large, regional recruiting firm of 150 employees. I also discovered that recruiting is the most rewarding profession I have ever been involved with due to the ability to change other’s lives for the better! As a result, I stayed with that firm for 4 years then left to start Strategic Search Corporation on July 14, 1989. Since then we have become one of the top technical, scientific and engineering recruiting firms in the world including placing many candidates at such clients as ITW, Intermatic and Wrigley Company. We are now celebrating our 20th year in business.