Brian Ries:  

Ah... As many know, you can never predict where you will be in 20 years. But here is the "short" of it, in a long-winded way: After graduating from Glencoe in 1989, I had one month off before reporting to the Naval Academy. Four years in Annapolis earned me a B.S. in Physics and I service selected Nuclear Power - Submarines. Basically, some of the smartest people I met in the Navy were in nuclear power and those were the people I wanted to work with. After graduation and commissioning as an Ensign in the Navy, I spent half a year in Nuclear Power School in Orlando, FL, half a year at Nuclear Prototype in Charleston, SC, and 4 months at Submarine School in Groton, CT, before reporting to the USS Parche (SSN 683) out of Bangor, WA. After 3.5 years assigned to the sub - going places and doing things I can't talk about - I made it to Lieutenant and on the side, I was able to become a certified scuba instructor and develop my love of underwater photography. But, I also came to the conclusion that I did not want the [conditions of] life of a submarine officer for a career. So, torpedoing my grand scheme of a career in the Navy, retiring, and becoming a high school physics teacher, I ran headfirst into the eternal question of "What do I want to be when I grow up?" I decided to go back to school for a Master's degree, and having had enough engineering and science by this point, I decided to balance things out with an MBA. I was accepted to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and so packed up my things and headed to New Hampshire. The interesting part is that for those of you who know my brother John, he went to Annapolis as well, and got his Master's Degree from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. But, he decided to stay in the Navy. So, I separated from the Navy, took a detour to Australia for a month to dive and see part of that country, and then embarked on two years of business school trying to figure out life and business in the civilian world. Along the way, I made some great friends, became an ice hockey goalie, worked an internship at United Technologies in Hartford, CT, and did and exchange program to WHU in Vallendar, Germany. Yes... those five years of high school (combined with three years of college) German actually turned out to be useful. Finally, spring of 2000, I had to decide what I wanted to do. Thankfully, a consulting project I did for a class resulted in a spontaneous job offer (literally... "Where is that Navy guy? I want to hire him.") from a company called ArsDigita Corporation in Cambridge, MA. I decided it was an opportunity to not pass up. Once again, mostly because of the people - Not only management, but the engineers were primarily computer science geeks from MIT and Caltech. Basically, the type of smart, brainy people I like to work with. So, I moved to Boston... without knowing anything about living in Boston. ArsDigita was a wild ride. It was an enterprise application software company, but released their software open source and made money off of custom development consulting project. This was combined with a strong educational arm and the relationships with Caltech and MIT. It was also a dog-friendly office. The founder, Philip (the person who spontaneously hired me), is a unique individual who is a genius at computer programming (he started at MIT at age 14) and a darn good photographer (founder of photo.net). But, he also had a rocky relationship with the venture capitalists that invested in the company and after some back-and-forth and a midnight corporate raid to take back the company, he was eventually bought out. That started the downslide of the company. Unfortunately, when the bubble burst after 9/11, ArsDigita was sold to Red Hat Corporation and I was let go. Along the two year adventure, though, I fell in love with Boston (running along the Charles, living in Central Square), continued playing ice hockey, and enabled my travel / diving / underwater photography love with trips to the Galapagos Islands and Cocos Island, Costa Rica. Four months and 265 resume submissions later... I was hired by Rain Bird Corporation (irrigation products) for a product manager position in San Diego, CA. In two weeks, I packed my belongings, told my hockey team they needed a new goalie, and drove across country to San Diego. Luckily, Jonathan Ryan (for those who knew him in high school), lived in San Diego and had just bought a house. He needed a roommate, ...Expand for more