1. What is your professional background?
Prior to Fuel, I worked in a few industries. I started in South Africa where I received a Bachelor of Commerce degree in business management and marketing. I worked in the optometric industry as a sales person. Then I moved to East Africa, where I lived in Tanzania, and I worked as a marketing manager for an airline and safari company. The company I worked for did bush/flying safaris, and because the roads are so bad, there’s a market for it. They had small 12-seater aircraft that flew into the different national parks landing on dirt and gravel air strips. I worked with travel agencies all over the world, helping them understand our business model and book through us. I was there for about four and a half years before moving to the states with my wife and starting my position with Fuel.
2. What do you do here at Fuel, and what is your favorite part of your job?
I recently moved into a senior marketing manager position for the southeast region, up until then I’ve been working as an account manager for the Los Angeles territory. The favorite part of my job is the daily interactions with our Fuel team and members to identify opportunities and finding solutions to whatever challenges they may face. I really like how collaborative Fuel is; we have a great team that works hard together to help our members grow.
3. What is your favorite team building activity that Fuel has put together for its employees?
Fuel team building events are something I always look forward to and are loads of fun. My favorite one so far is when we went on a trip to Mount Hood for a snow day. We had snow ball fights, snowman building competitions and a lot of downhill tubing. I somehow managed to dislocate my knee while tubing and even after that it was still one of the most fun days.
4. Fun Facts
I am South African, and my first language is Afrikaans, which stems from Dutch. South Africa has eleven official languages, and I can do greetings in a few of them, but I don’t speak any others fluently. I also know a little bit of Swahili that I picked that up in Tanzania.
I grew up in Kruger National Park and lived there until I was 14 years old. There was no fencing around our town so there were all sorts of animals that would come through including lions and elephants. We’d play cricket or rugby and there’d be warthogs running onto the field. We didn’t have any snow days, but there were a couple of times that school had to be closed for a few hours because there were lions in our schoolyard and we’d have to wait for game rangers to come and get the lions out.
