Last week I was named to Ingram's Magazine "20 in their twenties" list, which recognizes "a score of up-and-coming twenty-somethings who are flexing their entrepreneurial muscle and making their mark on the Kansas City business scene." In case that link dies, here's what they wrote about me:
When it comes to innovation, Alex Waller oozes entrepreneurial zeal: “If you want to step into the game, you have to be tireless, ambitious, and not afraid to stick your neck out and champion an innovative idea,” says the 29-year-old mechanical engineer at MRI Global, formerly the Midwest Research Institute. In his line of work there is vision, and there is road-kill: “I think the speed at which innovation is moving is what keeps most people out of it,” he says. Working for a high-profile research organization, Waller is exposed to a wide array of projects. Basically, if it moves, flows, blinks or breathes, Waller has in interest in measuring just how much. His expertise is in design, rapid prototyping and testing of devices for clients with national-defense interests. His achievements include development of an air-monitoring device used at the 2010 Winter Olympics, and he’s currently working as project manager or designer on such varied projects as a biological particle collector for Homeland Security, a portable water-purification system for use in developing nations, and tracking eye gaze using motion-capture cameras. And he brings a mature altruism to his work, as with the water system: “Profit,” he says, “doesn’t have to be the only measure of success for an innovative idea.”
The selection process was a two-fold one. One of my bosses wrote a nomination letter on my behalf (and without my knowledge). After making the first round of cuts, I received an application in which I answered questions in short essay form about "my vision" for entrepreneurship. I made that cut too, and got a few pretty pictures of myself taken for the magazine. And of course, now I'm sort of the wunderkind of my company. Which is fun, I'll admit. I've been trying to be humble about all this. I really have. But humility was never my strongest attribute.
This all may have been fortuitious; my annual review is this afternoon.
And no, the picture above was not intended to be serious.
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