About

Welcome,

My name is Dylan Winthers and here is a simple "about me" profile that barely scratches the surface.

Above all, I am a family man who has been lucky enough to meet and marry my perfect other half. I am a shadow in comparison to her shining. I have a wonderful and supportive immediate family: my parents who live together here in town and my younger sister who studies at the University of Minnesota. While I love the rest of my family, I rarely get to see them, but when we do cross paths, it is always memorable. Everything that I do is to support or benefit my family.

Personal:   

While I am only 23 years old, some have said that I have already lived a full and trying life. Growing up, I excelled at athletics and was motivated to play hockey. I did so with every bit of energy I had. The August after I turned 16 I moved out of my parent's house to move in with a host family in pursuit of my hockey dream. That following January, Mayo Clinic diagnosed me with a rare form of cancer that was even more rare based on its location, my forearm. After five surgeries, two rounds of chemotherapy, a radiation treatment, and five years, the doctors had finally deemed the cancer to be in remission.

Meanwhile, I continued to play hockey throughout high school, despite treatments and illness and in spite of my illness, found great success. Due to the circumstances of the condition I stopped playing hockey after high school, knowing that the future that I sought after my whole life, was gone.

Luckily for me, I also met my future bride while in high school. Yes, we're high school sweethearts.
We both went to college as we scrambled through life together, paying bills, buying groceries, and all the fun things broke lovers do while living in a tiny one bedroom house. She agreed to marry me and we got married on November 11, 2011. (Yes, 11/11/11... I'll never forget!)

Two years later we had our first child; a beautiful baby girl. Unfortunately, during gestation at 20 weeks she was diagnosed with CDH, so we had known that at her birth she would be given a 50/50 survival chance. She made it 6 days before complications took her from us. They were the best 6 days a guy could ask for.

We have owned our home for a few years now, and have had the chance to make it our own. We are excited to say we're expecting another baby shortly who is completely healthy. We have two hilarious dogs and life is rarely boring in a small town full of friends. I'm a small to town guy with a big city aspiration.

Professional:

To be clear, my professional behavior will never be the same as my personal behavior. It is night and day between my work self and my home self.

I pride myself on being the most professional person anyone knows. I am always straight forward, polite, and confident. I excel at communication and leadership. In my opinion, these are two skill sets that must be developed rather than taught. While professors can give you an exam on proper methods of managing or communicating, those exam scores mean nothing when you are face to face with that situation. It is the ability to apply the knowledge that is important.

As my resume clearly states, I have studied several areas of academics outside of my major. Throughout the first few years of my collegiate education, I found so much interest in so many fields including psychology, communication, and business (specifically marketing). I took several classes based in all three of these other areas of academics, therefore I can comfortably say that I have more than basic knowledge of each of these areas of study. The English for New Media degree that I have obtained, as of May, combines a traditional analytic, literature based degree with a new age communication based theory. I have designed websites/projects, created/developed websites, and understand communication theory across multi-media platforms.  

In my opinion, you cannot teach leadership and I have lead many teams from a small group of three working on a marketing project, to a band of brothers on a hockey team. A leader is one who will lead the troops during the charge into battle, not one who sends the troops first.

I am rarely absent and never late. I am looking for a career that I can work for 35 years and then retire.