Barry Gardner:  

Hi! After leaving Thornridge High School, I attended Thornton Community College (now South Suburban College, then Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL, majoring in Economics. Following graduation (and entering the worst job market in years), a friend and I went on a study trip in Holland which we followed up with a backpack tour of the rest of Europe. The following year I started at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, where I majored in Finance and Business Economics. I met my wife Susan between college and graduate school and we married toward the end of my first year at the University of Chicago. After graduation, we moved to New York City where I started a ten-year career in the corporate world. I worked in finance, marketing and operations with International Paper Company, PepsiCo's Frito-Lay division, and Congoleum Corporation. In addition to our three years in New York, we lived in Dallas, Texas, Maplewood, New Jersey and South Bend, Indiana. After I helped sell the division where I worked in Indiana, I was offered a job teaching finance and other business subjects back at my alma mater, Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. I was on the faculty at Wheaton for three and half years before deciding that I liked being involved in business better than simply talking about it. So in 1991, I started a one-man consulting firm that specialized in finance and administration for nonprofit organizations and churches. Over 19 years, I moved in and out of employment relationships with clients and accountants. But in 2010, aft...Expand for more