I get to work with awesome people at Coolr and our customers on solving interesting and challenging problems through the ideation and building of high value products. We get to create things from nothing to make things happen.

What inspired you to do what you do? 

I love to create things that are better than what people have today, and am inspired to try to imagine or reimagine new ways of doing things. My inspiration for what we are doing at Coolr comes from my experiences being a part of and building amazing teams at Microsoft, Dashwire and HTC. Amazing teams are awesome to be a part of, and helping people raise the bar on team building and what it's like to be a part of an awesome team is what I am passionate about helping others to achieve. 

If you had to live off of one type of food, what would it be? 

Cereal

Executive Bio:

Ford was raised in the Seattle area and has been a technology enthusiast from an early age. He got his start as an intern at Monet Mobile Networks, the first company in the U.S. to offer 3G data access, and has spent the last decade working in the technology industry for companies creating mobile operating systems, cloud services, and smart devices. Ford most recently lead HTC's Connected Services division in Seattle and Taipei, reporting to the President. Prior to HTC, Ford founded and built Dashwire, one of the first mobile cloud service companies. Dashwire's award winning services allowed the company to win licensing deals with top global operators and retailers before being acquired by HTC in August 2011. Prior to Dashwire, Ford worked in mobile at Microsoft during the early days of smartphones. Ford is a graduate of Harvard.

I engineer software, principally. I solve problems. Often that involves code; sometimes it doesn't.

What inspired you to do what you do?

I've wanted to do this since I was 6 years old. There's just never been anything else that I could see myself doing.

What's been your favorite technology creation through the years?

Palm webOS.

I find ways to incorporate the human element into the many different things we do at Coolr, and I absolutely love, love, love it. For me, a standard day includes reading and collecting a lot of research, ideating and working toward putting all the puzzle pieces together. I also manage our company blog, The Coolr!

What excites you the most?

Trying new things - whether it's a new restaurant (the smaller, the better!), a new work out, or a new way of thinking … I truly get excited about learning new things. Watching my little guy Jackson explore the world excites me too!

If you had to live off one type of food, what would it be?

Toss up between BBQ (Texas style, Carolina style, any style) and biltong. I'm a foodie!

QA: I break things.

Where is your favorite vacation spot?

Kauai, Hawaii. You can just feel time slow down there, it is a magical place.

What's been your favorite technology creation/enhancement through the  years?

Cut/Copy and Paste. It is a simple feature, but oh so powerful and I probably use it at least 50 times a day to speed up my work.

I love coding apps that matter, so I'm still as excited as the day I started working at Coolr as an iOS developer.

What's your favorite vacation spot?

Patagonia! I really enjoy hiking and that place is amazing: mountains, rivers, amazing forests. There's a weird german word "waldeinsamkeit", which means "the feeling of being alone in the woods". Love that feeling.

What hidden talent(s) do you have?

Not sure if it's hidden or if it's a talent, but I write.

I get to make Coolr, and ultimately the world, a prettier place, one pixel at a time.

What do you like to do on the weekends?

Stereotypical Northwestie enjoys hitting the trails, camping, topless Jeep cruises (topless Jeep, not topless me), making motorcycle noises on my Harley, summer boating, winter snowboarding. Up for anything adventurous, even long walks on the bea... wait, is this a Tinder profile?

If you had to live off of one type of food, what would it be?

Mexican! No, wait, sushi! Mexican! Sushi! Thai?

I support business and product strategy and define/execute business momentum initiatives.

What inspired you to do what you do?

I've discovered that I have a compulsion to use partnership-building and pattern-matching to identify and exploit opportunities for large-scale improvement of peoples' quality of life and/or the planet's health.

What is your spirit animal?

Dragonfly

I create groundbreaking products and solve problems with a mixture of experience, perspective, code and grit.

What inspired you to do what you do? 

My father through his foresight that personal computers would eventually make a great impact in education and that we all have in us an entrepreneur spirit yearning to break out.  His work ethic inspires me everyday.

What's something unique about you? 

I wrote the original Windows 95 volume control so you may already be familiar with my work.

I have one of the more "unique" job titles at Coolr and that is something I am really proud of! I get to use my passion and experience in building happy, engaged, and connected communities to influence what goes into our product and our culture at Coolr. My typical day is filled with research, experiments, Google Docs, and lots of coffee. Engagement is the name and keeping people there is my game.

Oh, I also manage our social media - So Follow us!@Coolrinc

What website do you visit frequently simply because you love it?

Tough call, I love Techmeme because I like having everything in one place, but I also love food52 because it's beautiful and I like to make (eat) tasty things.

If you had to live off of one type of food, what would it be?

Cheese. Stinky cheese, soft cheese, hard cheese, goat cheese, sheep cheese. I don't discriminate. One day I want to own a creamery where I can make whale cheese.

I am the talent angler, although in a previous life I was perhaps a matchmaker. In the here and now, I introduce Coolr to wicked smart people who love to develop cool products and beautiful apps alongside other wickedly smart, talented, fun, creative and collaborative people. Here's why I think I was a matchmaker in a previous life: when people "fall in love" with the Coolr product and team, and the Coolr team gets a new team mate, it has all come together. Thing is, I want to make more matches!

IF YOU HAD TO LIVE OFF OF ONE TYPE OF FOOD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Won't be limited to just one, and I wouldn't live off of anything that comes in a shell or once swam and is served-up raw. Is a texture thing.

I lead the Human Insights Team and guide Coolr in all things people.

What's your favorite vacation spot?

Mountains or beaches. Sun Valley, ID or Indianola, WA

What inspired you to do what you do?

I was inspired to work with people from my experience of teaching skiing and managing a team of ski instructors. I love learning about people, and I am inspired to help people grow to leverage their strengths, connect with their authenticity, and find their purpose.

Helping people on their path of personal mastery makes my day!

I code the iOS app and occasionally brainstorm product design. On a typical day you can catch me flipping between .m, .h, and .xib files, sending Federico emojis, and gingerly asking server developers for TPS reports.

What do you like to do on weekends?

I enjoy playing Cookie Run while my mom and girlfriend cook for me as we prepare to watch inspirational Japanese dramas.

What hidden talent do you have?

When soccer opponents try to foul me they quickly learn of the folly of trying to interrupt an unstoppable force. You know what happens when a stick is inserted into bicycle spokes? Well, imagine the opposite of that. Yeah.

I'm keeping the team on track, writing requirements, cleaning up trello boards, triaging bugs and doing everything else that is not explicitly development, test or design.

What's the greatest lesson you have learned?

I finally realized that i'm not the smartest man on the face of the Earth. Helps me a lot to get things done.

What was your first cell phone?

Siemens c45 and Samsung x100 after that.

I come into work everyday and chew on things, sleep, eat, bark a bit, sleep, sleep, sleep.

If you had to live off one type of food, what would it be?

Only one?! I can't pick one! Peanut butter, weird things I find on the ground and Lick Ice Cream.

What do you like to do on the weekends?

Be free and run like the crazy puppy I am! I'm learning how to swim and how to retrieve.