But being from Virginia means a lot to me,… a whole lot. Growing up, we always felt too northern to be southern and too southern to be northern [1].  This regional and cultural dichotomy taught me a very important lesson: be yourself. There was never a particular way you had to act being from the middle of the east coast so I learned to simply be who I am.

I progressed through my formative years  in school where I was decent at sports but gifted academically.  Also when I hit puberty I realized that I wasn’t going to make it in pro football [2].  I was the kid who tore apart every toy I ever had in order to see how it worked [3].  This lead to my love of products and my love of figuring out how things worked.  I also had a great interest in art so I sought a way to combine my love of drawing with my love of technology as my professional pursuit.

As an undergrad, I studied Mechanical Engineering at the best football school for engineering (Go Hokies!) [4]. Upon graduation I realized that my passion was still in figuring out how products worked so I decided to further refine my knowledge of product development at Georgia Tech by pursuing a graduate degree in Industrial Design (Go [Insect that is extremely annoying but less popular than a bee or wasp] Jackets!).

My journey thus far has strengthened my resolve to understand products and design them to help improve the lives of people.  Design gives life to inanimate objects and makes them part of the lived human experience.  That is, in my opinion, the true power of design.
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1.  Confused? yeah, imagine me coping with this as a pre-teen…
2.  The Good Lord didn’t make me 6 ft like I prayed for… something to do with genetics I think.
3.  Hey mom, you remember that personal organizer that you got me that disappeared after a week? Yeah, well I couldn’t figure out how to put it back together so I hid it. My conscience is clear now…
4.  And that great school would be Virginia Tech for all of you non-ACC fans.​

​​DUANE ROLLINS / BIO

The condensed version.

Figure 1. World's Safest Plank.