Through CoMotion, I get to be both teacher and student: I lend my experience helping bring the best ideas to market, and in return, I am constantly learning about new discoveries and their potential applications. There are very few places where that exchange happens at this caliber.

The first team I supported through the UW-hosted NSF I-Corps Hub Northwest was a brilliant group of researchers from the Applied Physics Lab who had invented something out of their own necessity, then looked up and realized others could probably benefit from it, too. It was inspiring watching the evolution of their idea once they started talking to actual potential customers and learning where it might really make a difference. And personally it nudged me to learn more about the state of the world’s oceans and what lies ahead in protecting them.

I have run nine pre-seed pitch competitions, participated in dozens more, read countless pitch decks, and heard hundreds of pitches. Pitching is as much science as it is art, and I love helping founders find their voice when they are learning to talk about their work in this new, unfamiliar way.

Nelle Tobias was a whip smart, 88-year old naturalist and citizen-environmentalist who read me the riot act once when I complained about the weather. I grew up on the balmy Gulf of Mexico and this was one of my first winters in central Idaho. As we were walking out of the library together one afternoon it started to snow heavy… again. I don’t remember what I said, but I will never forget what she said: “How dare you? Weather is the one thing man hasn’t figured out how to control yet. How about we just respect it?” In an instant, she fundamentally changed how I see the world.

I love almost all sports, and I am so proud that Seattle is the epicenter of women’s professional sports and a draw for so many talented collegiate athletes. I am woefully inadequate as any kind of athlete myself, but few can rival my zeal as a fan.