David Moylan Telecommunications Manager
"I was born at a very young age," quips our spotlight employee as he begins to recount his life story. If a good sense of humor indicates an internal sense of well being and satisfaction, then David Moylan is indeed very comfortable with all he has accomplished. Also with where he's at these days, both personally and professionally.
David is one of many native Northwesterners who grow up in the area, move away for a time, and then find their way back to this region to settle in and enjoy the good life they were seeking all along. David grew up mostly in the Seattle area, "but," he says, "being a PK [pastor's kid] is a lot like being in a military family — you move around a lot!"
After being born in Seattle during the 1962 World's Fair, David soon found himself living in Pennsylvania and Oregon before returning to the Pacific Northwest for the first time, this "tour" with stops in Burien, Port Angeles, and Edmonds. David graduated from Woodway High School in 1980,then migrated south to play football at California Lutheran University.
A major turning point in Dave's life came the Fall semester of his sophomore year when, following a career-ending football injury, he began a period of intense self-examination that focused on thinking about the kind of person he wanted to be. Given the choice of moving his life in a new direction or continuing to play ball with the risk of losing mobility by age 30 — plus the realization that he "was getting far too much beach time" at CLU. David returned to the Puget Sound area in 1982 when he enrolled at PLU. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in broadcast journalism with a minor in Philosophy in 1984.
After graduation David's academic interests led to a job as a TV producer/director in Honolulu. There he married his college sweetheart, Jodi, in a ceremony in Waikiki at the foot of Diamond Head. But shortly after this the station was purchased by Rupert Murdock and "Foxed," i.e., down-sized and restocked with Murdock loyalists from other stations, so Dave took up tours of duty in the Army and Navy reserves before finding telecommunications work back in Western Washington. After positions with AT&T and the U.S. Postal Service, he returned to PLU in 1999 as our telecommunications manager.
So, the wandering is over and David feels fulfilled by a role that enables him to help empower those who work with him to grow and perform in a collaborative environment. David has helped to break down the conceptual silos between network and telecommunications, and he has worked to build high quality standards for his department. But most of all, Dave is delighted to be a husband and father of two sons, age 16 (Geoff) and 14 (Jeremy), and he is glad he went away to find himself in a way that brought him back to his Northwest roots.
And we're glad, too. His knowledge, collaborative spirit, and, yes, his sense of humor are all making a difference at PLU.