By Dalton Lee, Baldwin Wallace ’11
Bill Newhouse and his family.
We are going to go back in time for just a moment, not too far, only about twenty years. The year is 2002, you’ve just woken up for work and are still reeling from what happened on Survivor last night. Headed off to work, you grab your brand spanking new iPod, so you can jam out to all the tunes you’ve downloaded from LimeWire (you’ll salvage what’s left of your virus ridden desktop some other day). Huddled around the coffee pot in the morning, one of your co-workers predicts that in just twenty years you’ll all be walking around with supercomputers, working from home and holding meetings via video calls (and could oh-so-cleverly make it seem like the Eiffel Tower was just outside the window behind you), and finally that there was a forthcoming virtual world called the Metaverse. As you sit down at your desk, you might find yourself thinking, “What’s gotten into this guy? He must be on some weird AOL sci-fi chat rooms.”
When thinking about the leaps and bounds that technology has taken over the last twenty years, it can be staggering to comprehend. Now more than ever, it is the driving force behind our daily lives and continuously expanding its reach on the global economy. With boundless advancements in technology, it comes as no surprise that careers and education in this field are also booming. More and more members of our organization are pursuing careers in the tech industry, and those who were ahead of the curve are flourishing in their respective roles. We were fortunate enough to speak to three of our alumni who are doing just that. Bill Newhouse, Georgia Tech ’86, is a Cybersecurity Engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce; Shawn Brown, PhD, Bethany ’94, is the Director of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center; and Brian Smith, Cal Poly-Pomona '91, is the President of the Haven Agency.
Brian Smith and his family.
While there are few similarities in the day-to-day functions of these positions, each of these brothers shares a common link (see what I did there) in the journey to their roles. For Brown and Smith, there was a deviation from their original plans. Brown planned to become a high school teacher, but soon realized a passion for computers and began the journey to his current position—working the heft of his career performing research in public health. Following the completion of his bachelor’s degree in communication, Smith was struggling to find employment opportunities in this field. With great foresight he and another former member of the Delta Tau chapter enrolled in website development classes at a local community college, eventually finding employment in this field and working his way to the Haven Agency. Taking a more traditional path, Newhouse, a graduate of the cooperative education program at Georgia Tech, found employment with the National Security Agency (NSA) in their telecommunications (TCOM) directorate. Spending 23 years with the NSA, Newhouse went on to become their representative within other agencies and at the Pentagon. In the spring of 2010, Newhouse left the NSA and began his career with the NIST—continuing to serve his country and working with colleagues at the very peak of his industry.
The second connective thread between these three distinguished careers, and throughout most of our lives, is brotherhood. With his start at the Haven Agency, Smith had gone into business with the company’s founder and life-long friend, Chris Wheeler, who was an associate member of the Delta Tau chapter while Smith was serving as the Membership Orientation Officer. Brown and Newhouse may not have been directly hired by another Phi Tau brother, but they attribute the opportunities given and skills learned within the fraternity to many of the successes throughout their careers. Leadership, teamwork, and problem solving are highly valuable skills in the fields of all three brothers, and each of them detailed how the fraternity helped nourish and grow these attributes at an early age. The impact of these opportunities stretches far beyond the years as an undergraduate. When you’ve been in an organization that offers the chance to develop such skills and knowledge, it becomes easy to undervalue them and think them common.
Shawn Brown.
The accomplishments of these three men, in both personal and professional life, is something to behold. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown was working with WHO, UNICEF, and the Gates Foundation to transform vaccine supply chain in Benin, ensuring that more children in the country received lifesaving vaccines. With the experience of being imbedded in U.S. Government during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemics, helping them with computer modeling to advise the CDC, Brown and the PSC team were able to make the Bridges-1 supercomputing platform available to the national community during the COVID-19 pandemic. As Brown was working to curb a country and world in distress, Smith and the Haven Agency were becoming a beacon for companies in distress. Gaining the reputation of the “fixers” in the website development community, they were able to land video game juggernaut, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as a client—completing the design and development of the website in just six weeks. This led to partnerships with Riot Games, Live Nation, Ticketmaster, Tech Deck, Coachella Music Festival, and countless other big-name organizations. Sometimes the greatest accomplishments can be as simple as safely getting together with old friends. Following his COVID-19 vaccines, Newhouse was happy to once again get together with brothers of the Alpha Ro chapter at John Cochran’s, Georgia Tech ’89, lake house.
Now that we have reflected on past and present, a brief glimpse into the future is only fitting. With the ever-expanding world that falls under the blanket term of “tech” and the inevitably growing number of our undergraduate members looking to enter a career in it, each of our three alumni reflected on how to help our younger brothers in their journey. There was a general consensus among Brown, Newhouse, and Smith—it's all about knowledge and experience. Taking the time to learn everything you can possibly know about your respective field of study, practicing and perfecting, and gaining all the experience possible—be it from internships, jobs, or any other conduit. Take it from three men who have gone far in their careers, and you’ll find yourself on the road to equal success.
This is a sample from our most recent edition of The Laurel featuring members in STEM. To read the full issue or see past issues and sign up for distribution head to phikappatau.org/laurel.
