AJ Sedlak: The Origin Story

Thinking back, my career in marketing operations can be blamed mostly on my dad.

Before we owned a home computer, I’d accompany him when he had to go to the office on a Saturday. He wrote code for steel production systems, I played on a Mac nearby. He thought I’d enjoy the paint program since I had a lot of interest in art. I immediately used this new power to publish school news and sports in “The 6th Grade Post” newsletter for my classmates.

He spared no detail about how things worked, whether discussing a piece of machinery or a basic process of life. He always explained WHY something was. I was fascinated. He gave me old appliances and vacuums to take apart. I discovered how parts connected and worked together. The gears, belts and wheels told a story of design and engineering for a purpose.

Now with a family PC, we bonded over hardware and software. A good friend, a quintessential “computer nerd”, gave me my first glimpse into the online universe. I dialed in daily to local BBS’s and a university with real internet access, blocking the family phone line for hours.

I discovered Netscape when I got to college and I was hooked. There were no classes for web design, so I taught myself HTML the old-fashioned way—viewing web page source code and writing my own markup in Notepad. I learned the basics of JavaScript and one summer my dad taught me to program in C++. I learned how to be efficient in coding and to write for future flexibility and ease of maintenance.

Uninspired by the available courses of study, I elected to design my curriculum, borrowing classes from many disciplines. I turned web design into a career, which led to email marketing, which evolved into marketing automation and technology.

So here I am, still blending creativity and technical work. Here I am, still seeing all of the metaphorical gears behind a system. Here I am, still figuring out how to efficiently connect components to achieve a goal. Here I am, still trying to make work easier, scalable and maintainable. Here I am, taking what I’ve learned and sharing it with others through mentorship, community involvement and conference talks. Here I am, still learning.

Despite no artistic interest himself, my dad never dissuaded me from the arts. He knew computers and code and saw a chance to connect those dots. I realize now that he was very creative in how he approached coding and systems and I’ve found my own satisfaction in the concept.

He’s never said so, but I suspect he didn’t actually need all of those Saturdays at the office.