About the author

First off: I’m not a career anthropologist. I tip my hat to those who are, and I apologize for borrowing their professional title for this blog name.

When I searched for a word to describe the mindset that I bring to my own professional work – when my business colleagues would say “there’s something different about how you think about things; what *is* that?” – the best phase I could come up with was “business anthropology.” That seemed to ring a bell with people — still rather vague as to specifics, but implying the social / group dynamic / symbol systems in business.

My story: In the late 1980s, I got a masters in anthropology and took a job in banking.

That may not sound logical – as my father commented – but it made sense to me. I liked the social sciences but I also liked business. Social sciences were about understanding people. Business was about understanding people. It seemed to fit.

As an anthropology student, the only career path I was aware of was academia, and the professor track wasn’t quite “it” for me. I didn’t know what *was* “it,” but I figured I’d get out there and look around.

So I went into banking. (That wasn’t “it” either.) Then back to school for an MBA. A few years in management consulting. Then Silicon Valley. I’m a business utility player and have held a variety of job titles. (For more info, see my LinkedIn page.)

However, much to my surprise, throughout all my various and sundry business jobs – anthropology kept popping up and making insightful comments, like a Dicken’s Ghost of Anthropology Past in a pith helmet, haunting the conference rooms and cubicles and making observations about the cultural patterns of corporate life.

Why didn’t our customers love our new product? Well, the Ghost of Anthropology had something useful to say about that. Why is our department always fighting with that other department? GoA had a few ideas.

Even more surprising – a lot of the businesspeople I worked with were very intrigued. People kept saying, “Huh, that’s a useful observation – where’d you learn this stuff? Do you have a blog?” So now I have a blog.

A final comment on my formal anthropological training while a graduate student at Cambridge: heartfelt thanks to the late Professor Ernst Gellner (my faculty advisor, a man of frightening intellect) and the fascinating and accomplished Dr. Stephen Hugh-Jones (at that time the faculty sponsor of the graduate Social Anthropology program). I was a passing moment in these men’s professional lives, but they continue to cast a long shadow in mine.