Name: Ken Gray
Age: 66
Where do you live?
Cedar Key, Florida USA
How many relatives do you have with BCM?
More than I know! My late Great Uncle Ben, late Uncle Hank and many first and second cousins have BCM. My Grandmother (Mom’s mom, of course) was one of thirteen children, so BCM has numerous tentacles in my extended family. We would gather at family reunions and tell stories of our survival with sighted family members listening in with looks of amazement on their faces.
What is your job/would you like your job to be?
I am trained as a mechanical engineer, worked 33 years for Caterpillar Inc., retired ten years ago, but have since worked for several startups, most recently founding Dig Robotics. Dig uses motion planning, computer vision and AI to help operators more productively and efficiently run those big excavators you often see working along the highway.
What are your hobbies?
I enjoy walking my dogs, kayaking, fishing and boating.
What is your most useful BCM tip?
Apple and Mac products provide more clarity for me than any other PC or handheld device can. I find that remote work with a large screen or two under controlled low lighting in my home office is very effective for work or school.
What would you tell younger BCM boys/your younger self?
Absolutely anything you want to do is achievable, but the way you do things will be different than the way others do it – and that’s perfectly fine!
Greatest achievement/proudest moment so far…
I have a wonderful family and am most proud of them. One of my proudest moments was watching my daughter receive her master’s degree in environmental Sociology, but I am looking forward to celebrating her PhD in Eastern Medicine in a couple of years!
Not many people know this about me but…
I was an average, perhaps even below average, student in high school. That may have been because I didn’t believe in myself. All of that changed in 1976 when I finished third in the National Math Test, which was administered to potentially college bound high school students in the United States. It bolstered my confidence and made believers of my parents who confessed much later they didn’t believe it would be possible for me to finish high school, much less attend university. Placing third in the nation on that test was the spark that led to graduating with honors in Mechanical Engineering, completing my Master’s in the same field and then studying business at Stanford University and the Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
If you’d like to connect with Ken, you can find his LinkedIn profile here.