Background
Hello. My name is Stephen Hackett. I live in my hometown of Memphis, TN. I married my high-school sweetheart, and we have a toddler who is a patient at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a daughter and a cat.
I drive an old Toyota 4Runner with a Yakima bike rack, she drives a much newer Honda Odyssey. The cat doesn’t have a car.
I have a dogcow tattoo on my ankle. I was featured in The Memphis Flyer’s 20 Under 30 feature in 2010 and co-founded Operation Broken Silence with my brother Mark.
I have an account on Twitter.
Education
I discovered many of my passions in high school.
I attended the University of Memphis and majored in journalism after a two-year stint chasing an art degree. I was hired by The Daily Helmsman as “the Sports section layout guy” as an incoming freshman. (I found out later the Helmsman never hired incoming freshman.) I was promoted to News Editor my second semester, and laid out almost every page the paper produced for three years.
After several years, including some just going part-time, I finished college. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, with focuses in design and “Internet Journalism.”
Past Work
Four years into school, I took a job as a sales guy at the local Apple Store to help pay for my wife’s engagement ring.
I quickly became a part-time student and began working as a Mac Genius. Six months later, I was promoted to the Lead Genius position and quit my job at the newspaper. Being Lead meant managing my team of young Geniuses and keeping the angry people at the Genius Bar as calm as possible. I smoked a good bit in the parking lot.
After two years, I left Apple to manage a start-up Apple Authorized Service Provider. It was a lot of fun to see Apple tech out in the real world — not just from behind a Genius Bar. Most days it was a lot of fun, but some days it meant unloading hundreds of iMacs in the rain.
Current Work
In early 2010, I started as the IT/Multimedia Director at The Salvation Army Kroc Center in Memphis. I get to work with lots of technology, using it to help change the city I love for the better.
