My Teaching Philosophy

By 2022, California will have the largest STEM workforce in the nation and largest share of US STEM jobs. (CA Bureau of Labor Statistics)

California will demand a total of 1.1 million STEM jobs by 2018. Over 93 percent of these jobs will require postsecondary education and training by 2018. (Georgetown University)

By 2025, California may face a shortage of workers with college training. The projected shortage of educated workers with some college stems from a mismatch between the share of the workforce projected to have some college education by 2025 (29%) and the share of jobs that will require workers with those skills (36%). (Public Policy Institute California.

This said, there has to be reason to get the students of tomorrow interested in the fields of STEM. It's for the future of the world! My philosophy in teaching is very simple. If it's not fun, then it's not going to be interesting. I will take the CTE core academic standards, map those to the specific course subject (ie Engineering Design or Computer Development) then apply my 'real-world' experiences to curricula so the students will get motivated to learn.

Why this Teaching Philosophy?

It's worked for me for over 30 years! Currently, I'm in the later stages of my career, of which I've had a successful Silicon Valley career in the engineering field, at all levels, engineer to vice-president to CEO, starting divisions and companies. I also loved managing, teaching, and coaching high-tech enthusiasts for over 30 years. Fortunately, I’ve been blessed now to be able to step away from high-tech, and giving me the opportunity to pursue my original goals of teaching. Aside from developing and teaching high technology for 30+ years , I've offset my high-tech career over the past 25 years with coaching high-school baseball because of my passion for baseball.

For me, being able to help underprivileged students, and people in general, is greatest satisfaction that I can get, and I'm blessed that I may have this opportunity at the education-level now. I've worked extremely hard in the high-tech industry building a career not only based on results, but also based on values and integrity. Let me just summarize some of my accomplishments in the high-tech industry:

Engineering Design: Developed over 50 new technology ideas covering a wide range of products in the enterprise data center. Have 11 patents that focus mainly on storage technology and its role with managing today's data centers with various innovative methods that helped build companies or divisions. Some of these are centered around 3D graphics rendering, storage area networks, flash media, and various cloud technologies with wireless artificial intelligence. Very astute with design processes from concept to release to market growth.

Architecture/Product Development/GTM: Turned around Violin’s product portfolio with the successful architecture, development, release and launch of the system's operating system, ConcertoOS 7™, and product portfolio, Flash Storage Platform™ that led to 70% of the new annual revenue. The company went public (IPO) in September, 2013.

Corporate Strategic Vision/Direction: Hired into Intel’s Enterprise Datacenter Software Division, set vison, then grew business tracking to over $250M within 3 years. Implemented datacenter software architecture for server platform with a shifted focus on flash software to lift hardware into growing verticals (ie Virtualization, Cloud, Hadoop, Big Data, etc.).

Program/Release Management: Proficient at managing, planning and executing delivery of new product/application developments and new product/software releases such as successfully implementing 40+ system-level, storage products releases in only 6 years at Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Expense Management/Operational Efficiencies: Adept at implementing cost-reduction plans by reducing $2M/quarter cost savings, yet increasing release productivity by 40% that saved $5M+ development costs and reduced expenses by 25% through restructuring engineering/product management at Violin.

Global R&D: Solid record of global product execution to help peers soar above sales goal expectations, having transitioned Quantum to a software company that grew additional business to $120M+ within 3 years to an overall P&L of $1B.

Entrepreneur/Startups/M&A: One of the original storage developers at Silicon Graphics (employee #18) in the Entry Systems Division, developing the 1st storage processor that ignited the raster engine (graphics) to run data storage speeds in real time for cohesive 3D fluidity. Helped put Silicon Graphics on the map that eventually spearheaded to a $4B company (IPO). Led acquisition of 4 companies to accelerate the strategic direction and execute the overall product development strategy to meet the AOP. Started and sold 2 companies for solid, profitable exits.

Team Building/Management: Strong leadership qualities; expert at effective team building and management with demonstrable experience directing up to 2,000 global staff members as well as building teams from scratch.

Summarizing, I led product vision & development that helped generate 3 IPO’s at Silicon Graphics, Inc, Gadzoox Networks and Violin Memory. I built 3 new divisions in Fortune 500 companies at Intel, Quantum and Falcon Software. All addressing new market shifts with innovative new architectures that expanded market & revenue share in storage enterprise data center hardware and software solutions. These divisions entailed development centers in both the US and international (China, India, Australia and Europe. I turned around 2 public companies, Gadzoox Networks sold to Broadcom and Streamlogic sold to Rorke Data, that led to 2 exits for good investment returns. I have a history of innovation, envisioning and building world-class industry-leading technologies & teams, creating new markets, P&L’s and impacting thousands of staff, industries and users.

My rise from an engineer to an executive was never easy, but it showed a person who was passionate and determined to be a leader, so I could help others achieve similar goals. As a leader of engineering and companies, in several Fortune 500 companies, I had the opportunity to understand, learn, and realize how important it is to not only value the excelling individuals, but to take the under-performing ones and pull them up so they feel important, and get them to achieve similar success. Those situations are what make good leaders. Having built and run teams of up to 2,000, globally, diversified people, I was heavily challenged with making them as successful as possible. Each person was different, each country was different, cultures can clash, and expectations from one can be different from another in terms of thinking from their past backgrounds. It's not easy, and it's not for everyone. But, if you are passionate with compassion, and are open to listening before speaking, then you learn to be a good leader, that is reflected by the respect given back to you by the teams. My style was that you can't make someone respect you, but that you have to earn their respect, no matter what. Yes, you need to set goals, objectives and expectations, but it's your job to teach and coach your teams on how to achieve these. I used my experience from when I was in their shoes, looking up at the leaders and knowing what I wanted to hear. When I talk to an audience, I always use that approach. If I'm in their shoes, what do they really want to hear from me, then how do I articulate that to a level that they understand the subject-matter fairly easy. Net, there is not 'my way or the highway' approach with anybody. It's taking the audience/team into consideration first, in advance, and then being prepared on how you plan to address the lessons plans with them, so this team gets what your messaging in ways that they may not of thought of. Creative teaching brings out the best in everyone, and having that open mind to do so creates tons of opportunities for reaching into each individuals needs that can help them. It's a joy to do, a joy to watch and a joy to see progress with struggling students that may never have had this opportunity before.

I love talking to inspiring individuals, whether their students, or employees, that really want to learn and understand 'what it takes' to achieve their goals. I thrive to learn more, and in turn, help others as well.

Engineering, Science & Technology (STEM) Curricula's

My respective hands-on, leadership positions have allowed me to build the necessary expertise to be a senior executive-level engineering/technologist, and CTE STEM teacher across multiple areas of disciplines such as; architecture & design, product development, product management, QA, support/service/sustaining, M&A’s, start-up’s, etc. Solid results and working with great people have lended to my abilities to run global R&D, mid to small and ground-up/startup engineering teams. In addition, I’ve always taken my deep technical knowledge of solving R&D/operational deficiencies to partner with my peers to help them build solid marketing and sales teams within complex technology company infrastructures. This takes very hard work, dedication and know-how where the fine-line of success is only judged by the results. Still hands-on with deep technical, market, competitive & customer environment knowledge in enterprise data center's infrastructure, I will cover these areas within my course offerings:

Engineering Design
Engineering and Technology
Computer Sciences; Cloud, SaaS / IaaS, IoT, AI / ML
Applied Computer Science
Applied Technology
Math Made Easy
Science for Life - the future wonders of science
Product Planning & GTM Strategy
Architecture / Product Development and Product Portfolio Enhancement
Developing a Start-up, Corporate Valuation & IPO’s
Business Planning - develop idea that gets funded and is brought to market (ie Shark Tank
Build a Solid Sales Model / Revenues / P&L Management
Business Development
Enterprise Cloud Technologies
Global R&D Management
Engineering Management
Team-Matrix Management
Product & Division Acceleration
Web-Scale & Scale-Out Computing

..and many others, as indicated by the school, area and economic needs.

I will develop each curricular in accordance to The Common Career Technical Core (CCTC) which are a set of rigorous, high-quality benchmark standards for Career Technical Education (CTE), the result of a state-led initiative that provides legal authority to develop the CTE standards and framework. I plan to organize each course specific to the STEM subject of my experiences (above) with the integration of career technical and academic education. Although these standards were written for grades seven through twelve, specify learning goals in 79 career pathways organized around 15 industry sectors, they can be expanded and be used for community colleges and adult learning centers, as well.

The California State Plan for Career Technical Education that was approved by the State Board of Education in May 2008, provides guidance for California’s CTE programs in California. The State Plan states, “CTE programs are dynamic; curricula need to stay current with rapid changes in the workplace, requiring ongoing updates and learning on the part of CTE faculty.” The adoption of the English Language Arts and Mathematics Common Core State Standards furthered the need to revise and align the CTE Standards with this new academic core. Once the CTE Standards were revised, academic and CTE teachers collaborated on the alignment with the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Core Ideas, and the History/Social Science Standards. The newly revised CTE Model Curriculum Standards designed to prepare students to be both Career and College ready were adopted by the SBE on January 16, 2018.

This is a key because I will be able to teach, guide, mentor and coach students to really understand the core material because I'll make my curricula very easy and fun to learn. Fun to learn is done by 'applying the academic learning' with the 'real-world reasoning' on why engineering, science and technology can be so interesting and rewarding. Thus, my teaching approach and philosophy are very simple. I will use 'real-world' experiences for every course to set my curricula in accordance with CTE Common Core State Standards. Students will not have to memorize because I will use the 'open-book' philosophy; just as my education was taught to me at Cal Poly. This teaching method will get students excited, engaged, and eager to learn the subject-matter as they will know the benefits of what each of my courses will bring to them as they think through their career ambitions.

I'm excited that I get this opportunity to help and inspire so many young and older students to the field of engineering, science and technology. I know they'll learn and have fun, their excitement will build and then it’s an chain effect; very fun environment and class to be in that will be critical to their career success. It'll be well-worth my time and I know it'll be worth their time!

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