Throughout my adolescence, I had always been "the computer guy".  However it wasn’t until the summer of 1994 that a career in technology really started to take shape.  I had just finished highschool, and was working my final summer as a dockmaster at the City of Chatham marina.  People from all over the Great Lakes region would cruise down the Thames River to spend their weekends in our little southern Ontario town.  I split my time between actual "work" and socializing with our guests to make them feel welcome.  As summer jobs go, it was fantastic and was right in my wheelhouse.  I recall spending a good amount of time one weekend with a particular couple who had come in from Cleveland on their mid-sized yacht.  Jeff Christian was a young executive who was not afraid to talk about his success, and was equally complimentary of the people around him.  He was apparently impressed with me during his short visit, and before navigating his way back up the river he left me his business card and urged me to call if I ever wanted any help.  I tucked it away, and knew it would be a valuable contact.

A year went by, and as I neared the completion of my final year of university I made a call into Jeff looking for some career guidance.  He welcomed me into his company, where I became the first summer intern at Christian and Timbers.    It was a tough summer for me.  I was a naive kid from a small town in Canada moving to a relatively large and unsafe American city.  Without a car, I found Cleveland and in particular the neighbourhood in which I was subletting an apartment to be a scary place.  Public transit was sketchy and I had my life threatened on more than one occasion.  Jeff took me under his wing, bringing me out to his house on a few occasions to spend time with his family, and encouraging some of my co-workers to lend a hand as well.  I was nobody, but he chose to invest in me for some reason and for that I remain grateful.  He was powerful and could be ruthless, but at the same time compassionate and caring of the people around him.

While at Christian and Timbers, I met many great people both in the IT department and throughout the company.  I was put onto a handful of IT projects that allowed me to spend time with pretty much everyone as I tweaked their desktop Macs or trained them on the new email solution.  Working at one of the hottest tech headhunting firms also gave me an opportunity to see how the industry works, and to get a feel for how one should manage their career.  My direct manager Kinton made a point of crafting a reference letter whose sole purpose was to help set me up for bigger and better things in the future.

The following summer that letter was specifically cited as the reason I was selected to join the internship program at GTE (now Verizon) at their headquarters in Dallas, Texas.  There I was exposed to bleeding-edge technology and really gained a passion and understanding of new media and understanding the point where technology and business need combine to create value.  After GTE I was able to create many more opportunities and was lucky to be able to take advantage of them all.  These early years set up my career like a line of dominoes, one that is still very early in its cascade.  I progressed through Procter & Gamble, Oracle, a small biotech startup, and for the last several years in senior management roles with Canada’s largest software company, Open Text.

It is in this role that I now find myself returning to Cleveland later this week to meet with some of our customers in the area.  I thought that it would be a good opportunity, more than a decade later, to look up some of my old friends and thank them for kick-starting my career.  So into Google I typed the search term “Jeff Christian Cleveland”, hoping to uncover current email of phone information so I can get in touch.  The result of that query was a massive shock to me: The Rise And Fall Of A Corporate Headhunter,  How Jeff Christian went from Silicon Valley recruiting sensation to homicide defendant in Cleveland.

It seems that since we last talked, Jeff’s life has been a severe roller coaster.  He landed a huge win in the late nineties by recruiting Carly Fiona to the top job at Hewlett Packard, and soon after the dotcom bubble burst his life came crashing down around him.  He split with his wife and took up with an eighteen year old girlfriend.  He became consumed by alcohol and drugs, and the new lifestyle came to a horrible climax when he was charged with negligent homicide in the death of a colleague.  In July of 2007, he was convicted in two separate incidents and is currently serving three years in prison.

Wow.  I have to admit that mostly I feel sympathy for Jeff.  Granted, I feel even more for the lives and families that were ruined by his actions but there is something inherently sad about this story.  A man that once took me under his wing and showed so much compassion under much simpler circumstances must have found himself with no one around him with the strength or determination to help.  Jeff’s primary character flaw has always been hubris, but when I knew him anyways that hubris was tempered by caring.  I can clearly see the path that led him to where he is now, and ultimately it is of his own doing.  But I only wish that someone could have been there to intervene and interrupt the self destruction.

Ultimately I am still grateful to Jeff, and to Kinton and all the other great people who helped to get my career started.  But now moreso than gratitude I feel a sense of sorrow for someone who was at one time a mentor.