Derek is an imaginative, innovative professional with strong visual presence, excellent writing and editorial skills, customer service acumen, and subtle ability to translate a vision into tangible product.Derek's studies include pitch experience as the creative director for Gnome Advertising, Purdue University Calumet's entry in the AAF National Student Advertising Competition. For the Yahoo! campaign, the team was tasked with creating a new portal for Yahoo! targeted to the Teenage demographic. The imaginative and interactive experience was dubbed Yahood, the Yahoo! Neighborhood. Graphically, it could have been played as a first person game, similar to Second Life, but with the similar social networking aspects as Facebook. This competition was in May 2005, and Facebook had just purchased its domain name. Since graduation in 2005, Derek has spent much of his career in communicating one way or another: visually, verbally, or in writing.