Greetings Fellow Steemians! (intro post)

I cannot express my excitement to join this wonderful community! I've been posting here for a couple of weeks now, and it occurred to me that I failed to write the obligatory #introduceyourself post. (appologies, I was a bit overwhelmed up-front)

About Me

I was born and raised in New Orleans, LA. I studied Accounting . While I was in college I worked as a store manager for a national specialty retail company headquartered in the same town—this is odd because there's not many companies based out of here that aren't in either oil and gas or the hospitality/tourism sectors—which brings me to the year 2000. I was 24, fresh out of school, and my company asked me to take a district manager position in Houston, TX. I gladly accepted because honestly at the time there wasn't much opportunity outside of the aforementioned industries. I was 24 when we moved away from home for the first time.

Living in Houston was great. I was overseeing all facets of operations of 23 retail stores with over 120 employees. The district had been poorly run for several years, so I had my work cut out for me. Needless to say, I learned a lot about leadership, running a business, and myself in the process. I handled it well. A little over a year later I was promoted again to the regional manager of east Texas which required my wife and I to move yet again to Dallas. I now had more stores, and a few district managers in my portfolio and everything was going wonderfully. I was making a name for myself in the company, earning far more money than I ever imagined I would, and built my region into the flagship operation for the company. And then it happened. I met a couple of guys who had an idea for a humanitarian project in Africa that was unllike I'd ever heard It flattened me. From that point forward, all the recognition, all the money, everything that I once cared about no longer seemed to matter. I walked around is a kind of daze for months after our first meeting. All I could think about was the idea these guys had.

Shifting Gears

About four months after our first meeting one of the two guys with the Africa idea gave me a call from the UK. He let me know that while the vision and scope of the project was clear, neither of then had the time or operational experience to handle the boots-on-the-ground work that would be required to get the project up and running. He asked me if it was something I'd be interested in taking on. When we got off the phone I went home immediately to discuss the opportunity with my wife, and she suprisingly said she was in as well! Her perspective was that we had no debt, owned our cars, didnt have kids, and if we were going to do something dumb, we might as well do it before we turned 30. . .

I called my boss later that day and let him know what we'd decided to do. He was suprised and sad, but supportive. To this day I respect that man so much. We agreed to my staying on for another month to help with transitioning my replacement into the job, and I began to work my way out of the day to day.

The Africa project took about three years to get up and running. We selected Cameroon for the project after visiting several African nation's. I had a hand in establishing the foreign NGO with the government, negotiating the lease of a 10,000 square foot building that would be our local headquarters, recruiting a team of volunteers from the States, hiring a team of locals to staff several jobs that we brought to the area, and got all of the vocational training programs off the ground.

The people of Cameroon were unbelievably warm and welcoming. I was in love with what I was doing.

After the project was up and running I was asked to undertake a reorganization project for our mother non-profit in the states. At the end of the reorganization I was asked to assume the role of Executive Director. I was reluctant to take the job because of my attachment to the project in Cameroon, but wound up relenting. So we moved to Pennsylvania.

Non-profit Boards Can be Difficult

I'm not going to spend much time talking about my time as executive director. It was a big job, and I did my best. The organizations board was constantly in the way of progress—the same board who would readily admit that "drastic change" was needed. Despite their meddling we were successful at making many changes that have gone on to serve the organization well. It's a far better place now than when I left it. The most remarkable change wound up being a four year project that transitioned a failing print publication into an online publication. This website that was created was just named Inc. Magazine's #122 of 500 fastest growing companies!

Back to New Orleans

As Dorthy put it, "there's no place like home." So once I decided that I was over arguing with the board, we decided it would be nice for our son to grow up around his grandparents. About a year later his younger brother was born.

To pay the bills, I opened a home security and automation company because I fell in love with it while building my home, and I wanted to move around a bit more in my work, and that company took off quicker than I had ever imagined. It was sold to a larger firm a few months ago. I'm now in the process of looking for what's next, and as things turn out, I'm now working on a blockchain venture with the same two guys who had the idea for the Africa project!

I originally got into Steemit because I was doing market research for this vew venture, but I have to admit that I've caught the bug badly!

I'm not quite certain that I've found my voice yet, and I'd love to hear from you as to what types of content toud like to read, so please let me know in the comments section. I've written a few different blogs in the past chronicalling my work. I'll probably share some of that with the community, and I'll begin to share information on the new project once the lid's off. I may also write a little about consumer electronics and automation as I've developed an extensive knowledge of that industry as well.

Hope to see you around soon, thank you in advance for welcoming me to this community!

@abhaya504

Also posted to Whaleshares.io