The Voice of Ogden usually wakes up just in time to take a shower, make a pot of his favorite coffee from Kauai, and drive to his corner office in the Visit Ogden Tower on 24th street and Kiesel. He brings The Voice with him, but he doesn't use it unless there's a need for an emergency announcement.
It is entirely possible he is wearing flip flops.
He is definitely wearing a hat. It might be his well-worn Kauai baseball cap. It might be a beanie. It might be the coolest cowboy hat you have ever seen (people fairly often try to buy it from him). He only owns jeans and shorts. No slacks.
But enough about his impeccable sense of fashion.
It is important to understand his history.
Before he was The Voice of Ogden, he was just a boy in Park City. He attended BYU and became a copywriter. "My first real job out of college was as a copywriter at Browning, up in Mountain Green. I eventually became the creative director for their in-house advertising agency. I tried living in Morgan for about a year and a half but found myself constantly coming to Ogden for everything from groceries to entertainment. It just made more sense to move to Ogden since that’s where I was really 'living.'" He's called Ogden home for over 25 years.
After simply ceasing to show up at Browning anymore—he didn't quit; he just stopped going in until they assumed he'd moved on—The Voice of Ogden founded Out of Bounds Creative, his own advertising agency: "I was a partner/principal/creative director at my own advertising agency that specialized in the outdoor industry . . . hook-and-bullet, ski, cycling, etc. We had a roster of some of the biggest national and international names in the outdoor industry. It didn’t hurt that a bunch of them were moving to Ogden at the time."
After ceasing to show up for work at his own company, for a year The Voice of Ogden wandered the desert like a prophet. "I sold my ownership in the agency and decided to focus my creative energy on songwriting and music," he explains. "After about a year of that, I learned that a regular schedule, a steady paycheck and a benefit package are nice things that singer-songwriters don’t typically have. That realization coincided nicely with Visit Ogden’s search for a full-time Director of Marketing, so I tossed my hat in the ring." Since then, The Voice of Ogden has worked as The Voice of Visit Ogden, a position that is colloquially known as "Director of Marketing." He describes his work there as "a storyteller." But deeper and a little more emphatically than you are probably imagining it, dear reader.
He's been there from the beginning of Ogden's transformation from the most dangerous and horrible city anyone in Utah can imagine to a place not quite as scary as West Valley. "I have been fortunate enough to not only witness Ogden’s transformation from a front-row seat, but to play an active role," The Voice of Ogden intones. "Twenty years ago, people would say they lived 'north of Salt Lake City' when talking about Ogden. Now, you see Ogden stickers on cars everywhere you go. People proudly wear clothing proclaiming their Ogden roots. I’m most proud of my branding and storytelling work that has embraced Ogden’s grit and stayed true to what makes this place so amazing. I’d be okay if the 'Notoriously Independent' tagline that I created for Visit Ogden was on my tombstone." Dear reader, I can confirm this. I once told a crowd of people that I was from Salt Lake City, and The Voice of Ogden shouted me down, insisting that I was from Ogden, not Salt Lake City. I have felt a sense of shame about that, ever since. It was a lapse. A brief moment of geographical failure.