In some ways Timo Anderson’s journey from Flint, Michigan to Ann Arbor, Michigan was pretty circuitous. It involved visits to Japan as an exchange student, a degree in Kalamazoo college and foreign study in Kenya before it brought him to Wayne County.

Timo’s experience at Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency involved working with every single school district at every level – student, staff and administrators. The core of the work was focused on team building, with a particular focus on engaging people in the learning process as a team. Timo’s team building work explored ideas of cohesiveness, leadership and communication through dialog as well as a kinesthetic component. He also worked with teams to develop effective methods to process information and solve problems as a group. Timo’s time at Wayne County RESA culminated in his appointment as Director – highlights of his career there include development of a summer program that accounted for 15% of the annual budget and growing overall program participation from 6000 to over 10000 people a year.

Wayne County RESA was followed by a position as Lead Instructor at The Guidance Center in Southgate. While there, Timo worked with youth and unemployed adults in a variety of programs to develop their interpersonal and employability skills. These included a Hotel/Hospitality program and the National Retail Federation curriculum. Perhaps his most rewarding work with The Guidance Center was to create a program that assisted unemployed parents to successfully complete the required Child Development Associate curriculum to qualify as HeadStart substitute teachers.

While life in the non-profit world came with its own rewards, Timo was ready to make a switch to the for-profit world and when a position at ZingTrain opened up he eagerly took the chance to learn more about how his skills would parlay in a world where both profits and values matter equally. The fact that food was always a part of his personal life – witness a childhood peppered with Finnish sardines, oysters, and just about anything not on the usual list – just made working for ZingTrain and Zingerman’s just that much more interesting!