My Redroom URL

• http://www.redroom.com/member/garddb

About Me

• I have 15 years of experience in communications -- including corporate and political strategic communications, public relations, on-air television broadcasting, newspaper reporting and magazine writing. I'm also an aspiring fiction and screenwriter. I've written one screenplay, and I'm currently at work on another. I'm a former television reporter and anchor who covered the Oklahoma City bombing and its aftermath for more than two years (including reporting for the Fox News Channel in Denver, Colorado). In January 2008,  I became assistant dean for communications and marketing for Oklahoma City University's School of Law.

  Before my position as assistant dean, I served at the Oklahoma House as communications director for three years. In that position, I served as strategic communications counselor for the Speaker and House majority leadership, while overseeing a media and communications staff of five. Before my work at OCU and the Oklahoma House, I was spokesman for Integris Health for more than 7 years, handling crises including the intense influx of national media during the devastating May, 1999 tornadoes in Oklahoma City.  I'm a 2004 OKC Business "40 Under 40" honoree, and my print reporting has been published in the Dallas Morning News, The Houston Chronicle, National Journal and Oklahoma Today magazine.

Relationship Status

• I'm married to a lovely woman, and we have one beautiful daughter.

Interests & Hobbies

• Literature, film, writing, amateur digital photography, food, politics, organic backyard vegetable gardening, triathlons, pipes

Favorite Books

• The Martian Chronicles, Slaughterhouse Five, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mere Christianity, The Right Stuff, Lord of the Rings, The Cost of Discipleship, A Wrinkle in Time, Walden, The Dangerous Book for Boys, Friday Night Lights, A Moveable Feast, The Unsettling of America, Blood and Thunder, Lonesome Dove, The Everlasting Man, The Abolition of Man

Favorite Authors

• Vonnegut, Poe, Tolkien, John Irving, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Wendell Berry, Andrew Niccol, David Mamet, William Broyles, Jr., William Goldman, Andrew Kevin Walker and many fine poets

What I'm Reading

• The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler, Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross by Richard John Neuhaus, Praying Like Jesus: The Lord's Prayer in a Culture of Prosperity by James Mullholland, Watchmen by Alan Moore

WORK

• Assistant Dean for Communications & Marketing at Oklahoma City University Law School January 2008 – Present Communications Director at Oklahoma House of Representatives January 2005 – December 2007 Spokesman at Integris Health Non-Profit; more than 10,000 employees November 1997 – January 2005 Reporter/Anchor at KOKH May 1996 – November 1997 Anchor and bombing correspondent. Reported for national FOX News Channel at Denver, Colorado Timothy McVeigh federal trial from late 1996 through the summer of 1997. Reporter at KOTV - Channel 6 (Tulsa CBS affiliate) December 1994 – May 1996 State Capitol correspondent, anchor. One of the first reporters in Oklahoma City to arrive at the scene of the April 19th bombing. Covered two sessions of the Oklahoma State Legislature as Capitol and public affairs correspondent. Associate Producer at KWTV 1993 – 1994

EDUCATION