Andy has an interest post about people who have influenced his career. Andy and I have been talking about this recently so I had an opportunity to think about the folks that have been key in my professional life.
Here is my list in no particular order:
Marlon Lucero / Friend / General Manager, SQL Integrators My first full time job was working for a small nonprofit organization in Philadelphia. I was the systems "tech guy" administrator. Though I really loved my job, my passion was in development, which I did not get to do much of. Marlon was a vendor who saw my talent and helped me find my first development job. Marlon has been a great advisor for me in the last 7 years.
Mitch Ruebush / Friend / Chief Architect, ING Direct, USA
The best thing I learned from Mitch was how to debugged code and how to find the answer to technical problems. I owe a lot of what I know to him. He is humble and smart. Great combination.
Nic Coviello / High School Teacher
One of the best things someone said to me was "why be a technician when you can be the engineer". This summarizes the influence that Mr. C had in my live. He was the first person to believe in me. He pushed me to be the best that I could be. I attended a vocational high school where as a non native speaker I did not get the proper level of English education to get me to college level upon graduation. Because of this my English SAT scores were not that high (big surprise 
) . A school counselor told me that maybe I was not "college material". To make a long story short, the quote from Mr. C came the day I told him about my conversation with the "counselor". Oh and by the way the "counselor" did not last long after that.
Rev. Danny Cortes / Rev. Luis Cortes
former pastors and former bosses
SVP, Esperanza USA / President, Esperanza USA
I learned a lot from these two guys. Mainly about community service. They also helped me find my voice and for a young Latino living in an area where the expectation was for us to end up dead or locked up by 20, this was a big thing.
Jeff Chapman /former boss / VP Technology, ING DIRECT, USA
It's all a political game. That's what I learned from Jeff. I did not always agreed with Jeff but the man is a genius when it comes to work place politics.
There were also many "jerks" that influenced my career. So by taking lemons and making lemonade, these "jerks" mainly taught me how "NOT" to treat people. So if you worked with me and did not make it to the list above you know how I feel about you. . Just kidding...I have worked with many great people.
Schwammy Says... - 5 People that Influenced My Career