invention. Well, I sometimes think laziness is the mother of some of the best inventions. I grew up in a big, historic house. As a kid, I loved reading right before bed. I would already be in bed and reading, but the light switch was across the room. When I started to get sleepy, I’d have to go turn off the light and I would be walking in the dark and—I’m clumsy and I would bump into something—that really woke me up. So, much to my mother’s chagrin, I concocted a series of hooks and pulleys so that from my bedside I could pull a string and turn the light off. She didn’t like all the hooks in her walls, but it worked great.
I built a rocket engine out of my mom’s vacuum, which did not make her terribly happy, but I did relatively well in the science fair.
X: What leadership lessons did you get from your parents?
NM: The most important thing I got from my mom was if you’re new in a group, find the thing that nobody wants to do and just do it amazingly well. That applies to your team as well as individually.
There’s all sorts of things going on in our company. A lot of people thought I was crazy for leaving Silicon Valley and working in Houston, and switching from working on drones to working in healthcare. It’s difficult; there’s lots of regulation. Hospitals have this reputation of being technologically behind the times and slow to adopt new things. But I love challenges. That’s one thing that both my parents instilled in me: It’s best to be challenged.
I think that’s one of the reasons I wanted to go into leadership. Do I want to be a super- super- super-good programmer and hone that? I was comfortable writing software, but leveraging the technological skills and getting the skills in personnel management is really pushing me in a different direction.
X: Tell me about your early influences.
NM: I had these gigantic book shelves where my mom kept books that she’d already read. Our house was full of books. These were the overflow books. She bought me an encyclopedia set. I loved it. I loved the ability to get curious about something and instead of just asking somebody, I would go and look it up. I guess you do this on Wikipedia now.
You know on Amazon the section that says, “If you like this, see also”? At the bottom of [encyclopedia entries] it would basically say, look at this. I would go down this rabbit hole of learning all these new interconnected things. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it really prepared me well for doing research on topics.
Also, it makes me totally appreciate Wikipedia now.
