Mike, Personally

I am a family man. I am blessed with a wonderful family and fortunate to share a loving relationship with my wife Stell. Our two daughters and their families provide us with our most cherished times. Travel and outdoors activities are favorite pastimes. Indoor badminton, the fast and strenuous kind, is my hobby and sport. Sometimes Stell tells me she is #3 after badminton and work, but I know she's just kidding.

My background involved a lot of moving around, both growing up and in early adult years. I lived in Florida, Washington, D.C., Italy, Maine, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and New York City. Relocation is old hat to me! These growing up experiences prepared me for many of life's choices. After receiving a liberal arts education, Peace Corps Volunteer work in rural India was my immersion into the real world.

Later, a five-year tour of duty with a large international bank returned me to live in India, this time in an urban setting, introducing me to a diverse group of people in a wide variety of businesses, from shrimp farming to exporting emeralds.

My Peace Corps efforts to help people enhance their self-reliance, combined with my experience in banking and creative interests, led me to my next career move. My partners and I exported decorative handicrafts, mostly of our own design, from India and Africa for U.S. consumers. A most rewarding aspect was offering employment to woodworking craftsmen, numbering more than 300 in a south India village, and to women basket weavers across central Kenya.

Ten years of intercontinental travel and long periods away from home gave way to my career in real estate in 1986. Stell, Leslie and Jen beckoned me home for good.