Marisol, Inc. was founded in 1962 by my grandfather H. Peter. Marisol was a pioneer in solvent recycling in the Northeastern USA and reclaimed virgin materials from hazardous waste. It had the only facility in North America to receive El Digest Award for no RCRA violations for 8 consecutive years.

As a child I grew up around the Marisol office, which was run on paper and typewriters. As the company moved into the 21st century, we hired an IT pro named Derek who took me on as his summer intern across multiple years. I not only helped troubleshoot IT issues, but also took the lead on building custom software that made the company more productive. In 2007, we sold the company to Veolia ES.

That experience gave me what I eventually parlayed into my future career in software engineering.