Okay so real talk — I am from two very different places and somehow both of them make complete sense when I look at who I’ve become.
Chicago first. Because Chicago doesn’t ease you in. It just starts. The trains are already moving. The wind already has opinions. The skyline hits you like a statement and the city basically says — keep up or get out of the way. And I loved that. I love scale. I love the feeling of a city that’s too big to be precious about itself. Chicago taught me that infrastructure is everything. That when systems work, nobody notices. And when they don’t? Oh, you’ll know. You’ll feel it immediately, personally, and probably while standing outside in February.
But then there’s Elkhart.
Smaller. Quieter. The kind of place where you actually know how things are made because people around you are making them. Manufacturing towns don’t have much patience for ideas that can’t be executed. Nobody’s romanticizing the concept. They want to know — does it work? Can you build it? What happens when it breaks?
And that wiring? That got into me deep.
I grew up watching people fix things. Not complain about them, not schedule a meeting about them — just open them up, look inside, figure out what failed, and handle it. That’s just the culture. You don’t argue with a jammed machine. You diagnose it.
So now when something breaks at work — a process, a project, a relationship between teams — my first instinct isn’t panic. It’s curiosity. Okay. Where’s the friction? What’s the root cause? Was this even designed to hold up under pressure?
Chicago gave me range. Elkhart gave me receipts.
One taught me to think big. The other taught me to build real.
And honestly? That combination is everything. Because it is so easy to be all vision and no follow-through. It is equally easy to be all execution and no imagination. But growing up between those two energies — between skyline and factory floor, between think bigger and but does it actually work — gave me something I didn’t even know was a skill until way later.
I don’t just admire the thing. I want to know what’s holding it up.
That shows up in how I design. How I communicate. How I show up on a team. I care about the big picture AND the wiring underneath it. I get excited about possibility AND I want a plan. I can dream out loud AND I will absolutely follow through.
Midwest built, for real.
And here’s what I love about sitting with this — your hometown shaped you too. Maybe you grew up somewhere that rewarded speed. Or silence. Or hustle. Or deep roots. Or starting over. All of it taught you something about what to value when things get hard.
For me it was this, and I’m claiming it fully:
Build it strong. Make it useful. And if it breaks — don’t blame the surface. Check the structure.
Chicago and Elkhart both said that. Just in completely different accents. 😄