David Messmer

Background

About David Messmer

In all of my past jobs I have been a leader and manager of small teams, if not in title, then in function. I work extremely well in teams and have studied leadership theory by reading books by John C. Maxwell. I put all I am into what I do, and it usually doesn't go unnoticed. I have worked in a courthouse filing and digitizing records. I have worked helping to build an orchard at my local high school. I have worked at a grocery store bagging, managing carts, helping elderly and disabled people to carry their groceries. I have worked at Progeny Systems Corp. as a software engineering intern. I currently work at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Food Service. And I am currently studying Cyber Security at Year Up Baltimore in coordination with Baltimore City Community College. The most difficult challenge I had to overcome in my professional career was a situation where I was, in effect, managing a small group of software engineers to complete a very complex task. I was on a comparable level to the rest of the team members due to a number of factors including: one team member didn't understand English well, the most senior team member of the team had little experience in the particular task and those who normally managed the teams were extremely busy. Over the course of 2-3 weeks and a lot of stress, I was able to: understand the complex task given by the boss, translate that into basic enough English for the whole team to understand, gracefully navigate making sure the work got done right, and complete the project without my team members losing respect for me/brushing me off. That last part was particularly important because I was the youngest on the team, and it's rare for one as young as I am to garner the kind of respect enough to lead people on average twice my age.