Clay Gravelle

I'm a fairly typical Seattle native. After graduating from the University of Washington with a B.A in Sociology, I immediately put my degree to good use by programming databases for the UW and the United States Coast Guard. Looking for a bigger challenge I began work as a Systems Analyst for Microsoft, a company that none of my friends or relatives had heard of. Eight years later Microsoft was known around the world and I was a Senior Project Manager, but the work was no longer challenging so I retired and decide to see what there was outside of the virtual world. After spending a number of years traveling the globe, briefly working for a startup and as a consultant, I decided Seattle was the best city to live in and moved back here to stay. Looking for a volunteer position that would put my computer skills to work, I joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary where I continue to maintain websites and occasionally assist the Coast Guard with their databases.

The penguin connection. In high school I wrote my term paper on penguins sparking a lifelong interest. At Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, back when the Humboldt Penguins lived in the Children’s Zoo, I used to hang around at the pond when no one else was there and let the penguins nip at my shoes and pull on my shoe laces. When I traveled, I made a point of visiting zoos with penguin exhibits. Combining my interest in databases and penguins, I joined the Magellanic Penguin Project in August 2006 as a part time Database Specialist. The Penguin Database is far more complex than a typical business database and requires a knowledge of the science in order to truly understand the data. So, although I prefer computers and am anti-social by nature, I spent three weeks in the field at Punta Tombo in October 2007 with no internet access, a handful of scientists and hundreds of thousands of penguins. This brief foray outside of my virtual world substantially increased my knowledge of the data, but there is still much much more for me to learn.