Meet John

John began his career as a scientist working in the pharmaceutical industry. This experience helped him develop an appreciation of information collection, discovery, sharing, and reuse as central parts of research, as well as the challenges associated with these basic but fundamental tasks.

During his time as a bench scientist John occasionally participated in informatics development projects, doing things like describing the information needs and workflows of scientists and serving as a usability test subject, contributions that, at the time, he didn’t know were actually important tasks within a formal discipline. This growing appreciation of the processes of information management and a strong interest in new paradigms of scientific publishing eventually led John to return to school, obtaining a MSIM degree from the University of Washington’s iSchool.

Now an information architect and strategist, John develops solutions to information management problems that are grounded in a solid understanding of user and business needs and informed by modern thinking in information science. The eye for detail and analytical approach to thinking in terms of evidence for and against, differences and similarities, categories and relationships, that he developed as a scientist serves him well in his work that is focused on taxonomy and ontology applications and modeling. He has worked with commercial, non-profit, and government organizations of all sizes and across industry sectors, always seeking to bridge the gap between users and information, so that all users are able to find the information they need and businesses realize the full value of this important asset.

John is based in Seattle, Washington. He loves mountains, trees, sea food, craft beer and books, all of which are locally found in abundance. He holds BS and PhD degrees in chemistry and an MS in Information Management.