A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

The Early Years - Born in Minnesota, Derrick grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota until the age of nine.  He spent the rest of his childhood years playing sports (golf, baseball, and swimming were his favorites), exploring the wilderness, volunteering, and studying at Eastmont Senior High School.  

Undergrad - Derrick attended Central Washington University and graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts in public relations and specializations in business administration and advertising.  While there he was the Executive Vice President for the associated student body and paved the way for several programs that continue to date.  

Rockstar and Refi's - After graduation he worked for Rockstar Energy Drink as the Northwest Marketing Manager.  Traveling across the west half of the US promoting Rockstar at events, conducting product placement in media, and forming partnerships with celebrity athletes Derrick led the nation in this role.  Following his time at Rockstar, Derrick made a move into the financial industry and spent a year as an Senior Account Executive, selling mortgages, for HFC of HSBC.  

Beam Win - In 2007 Beam Global Spirits & Wine hired Derrick on as a Marketing Manager to represent their portfolio of spirits & wine (Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, Hornitos, Absolut, and Cruzan just to name a few).  He was quickly promoted to Sales Manager and again to Associate Marketing Director.  While at Beam he was inducted into the Canadian Club Society, the industry’s most prestigious sales club.  He was also hand selected to be featured as a brand manager for media management.  While there he also created several regional branding campaigns that were adopted nationally.

The Graduate - In late 2009 companywide layoffs led Derrick to the option either of taking a Regional Sales Manager role or pursuing a Master of Business Administration.  Derrick chose a road less traveled and followed his aspirations to invest in himself and obtain his MBA.  He thrived while in academia and rediscovered his "inner-nerd", graduating with a 3.67 GPA and proclaimed "Best Leader" in his MBA class.  Also while at Seattle University Derrick led a team to a First Place finish, over eight other teams, at a strategic case competition hosted by the University of Washington.

Moustache Mayhem - While studying for his MBA he was appointed as Chairman of the Seattle Board of Advisors for the Movember Foundation (a non-profit driven to promote and raise funds for men’s health issues, such as prostate and testicular cancer).  His leadership was globally recognized by the President, Adam Garone, for being integral to Movember’s success in Seattle; specifically by propelling both registration and fundraising growth over 300% from 2009 to 2010.  Since 2010  he has maintained a competitive presence on the Board of Advisors, by remaining as the Co-Chair (2011), Chairman (2012), and Co-Chair again in 2013.  He continues to rally volunteers, raise funds, lead live media interviews, help coordinate major events, and guide local grass roots efforts.  In 2013 Derrick initiated and coordinated the creation of a Weirdo Cult | Movember street art project; which included a featured mural in Seattle's Capitol Hill, a simpler mural in Fremont, and a documentary video of the production of it.

Amazon Innovation – After completing his graduate studies, Derrick went to work with the Seattle tech powerhouse Amazon to do what he does best, lead business development and define route to market strategies for the new business category.  Derrick was part of the Amazon Services division and played an essential role in the launch of the new Wine Marketplace.  Being Derrick was the first one onboard for the business development team he wore many hats from B2B marketing, data mining, webinar management, email marketing coordination, B2B website development, event management, strategy planning, presentation creation, sales, and process analysis.  While there, a leader of the team said, “we wouldn’t be successful without Derrick’s pivotal contributions.”     

Scaling Out with RightScale – Shortly after Amazon Derrick went to work for the cloud computing company RightScale.com within their marketing department.  Although the industry was new to Derrick, he excelled on the team and was quickly promoted from Partner Marketing Coordinator to Integrated Marketing Programs Manager.  While there, Derrick orchestrated marketing campaigns that encompassed all the departments resources and efficiently executed campaigns leveraging multiple marketing tactics at once.  These integrated campaigns were the first the company had ever launched.  Derrick also lead the development of the marketing roadmap, project managed their new lead nurturing program, coordinated the development of new webpages, produced sales materials, co-wrote white papers and blogs, managed email marketing, and oversaw paid search strategies.  His tenure was cut short after a series of company-wide layoffs.   

Porching It – Derrick was hired on the quickly growing company Porch.com in it's early days.  He was hire number 60 and held the title Local Market Specialist.  During his time at Porch the number of employees exploded to over 200 and Derrick took copious notes on how to scale rapidly and continue driving success.  From operational and financial hurdles to sales and marketing challenges Derrick learned from it all.  Outside of his sales duties Derrick assisted with optimizing sales techniques, operations, and marketing messages.  Porch leadership offered a new position to Derrick and he politely declined as it was time for him to pursue his own venture full-time.    

The Best Hangover You'll Ever Have – The venture Derrick left Porch for was a creation he had been working on nights and weekends for the previous several months, the Hangovers™ custom coat rack.  With the first few prototypes in hand and getting a positive market reaction Derrick incorporated his company, Good Hangovers Inc., then grew his team to four partners and a few contractors.  They advanced the prototypes, obtained a provisional patent and trademark, secured production contracts with vendors, produced the Kickstarter video, developed their brand and social media presence, and launched their Kickstarter within 6 months.  The experience has been highly educational and Derrick will be able to apply many key learnings elsewhere; major learnings were about product development, human resources, marketing, and sales.  

Microsoft - After Derrick's attempt at building Good Hangovers he landed at Microsoft working for a vendor (Nayamode Inc.).  Brought in to manage the Modern Workplace webcast series, he was also quickly handed the Office Small Business Academy webcast series.  He managed on-time execution of deliverables from all supporting teams, content creation and uniform branding for each episode, and overall marketing management.  After improving operational efficiencies and taking the marketing efforts to the next level Derrick transitioned to a technical product management role with the Microsoft FastTrack team.  There he focused on UI/UX, new feature development, quality assurance, sprint management, and business insights.  

Current Aspirations - Derrick is looking for a company he can grow with.  He'd like to help build a company and usher it to success for years to come.  He's committed to finding a company that he can be passionate about the product/service, challenges him intellectually, and allows him to vest himself into building something truly great.  In the meantime he actively mentors startups and consults other businesses, while searching for the right full-time opportunity.   

While the future is never finite, Derrick is set forth with the determination to touch everything he does with passion and to do so daringly.  He is optimistic, as he knows that as long as he faces adversity head on and wholeheartedly he will succeed, along with those around him.   

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