The path here
Eight years in uniform. A decade in the trades.
One operating discipline carried through all of it.
I.Combat medic, Airborne Infantry.
Before HVAC, before management, before the MBA, CJ served eight years in the United States military as a combat medic with Airborne Infantry divisions. The deployments stretched across three continents: Afghanistan, missions throughout Africa, Kyrgyzstan, and Europe. The lessons were the ones military service tends to leave: leadership lands on the people who show up first, discipline is a daily choice, and people are always the point.
"Putting people first is not a leadership slogan. It's how the work gets done when nothing else does."
II.Service technician. Then service manager. Then more.
CJ's path into the trades started where every good HVAC career should start: in the field, as a service technician. The hours behind a multimeter and a manometer taught him what the books couldn't, what doesn't show up in a YouTube tutorial, and what only earns you real respect when the customer signs the work order at the end of a job done right.
The promotions came in order. Service Manager. Then General Manager of an electrical company. Then a return to HVAC, because home comfort is where CJ wanted to be. The diagnostic-first method he runs at Tru72 today is built from the inside out, by someone who has done every job on the truck before they ever asked anyone else to do it.
III.A Bachelor's, an MBA, and a healthy lack of pretension.
CJ holds a Bachelor's degree and an MBA, but he's the first to tell you that the diplomas don't run a service business. Leadership is a lifelong learning process. Accountability is taught by watching it modeled, not by hanging it on the wall. Continuous improvement is what the team does between calls, not a slogan at an annual meeting.
The team at the Portland office is small enough that everyone knows the standard, and big enough that good work spreads on its own. That's the operating culture CJ is building, and the only one Tru72 was ever going to run.
"Great service starts with doing the right thing, even when no one is watching."
IV.Back home, where the work is.
CJ is a lifelong Oregonian. He grew up in Hillsboro, where he raced competitively on the Glencoe High School ski team. He and his wife are proud parents of four children and grandparents to one grandchild. Family is the center of CJ's life outside Tru72, and the lens through which he treats every Tru72 customer.
The standard for inviting someone into your home is the same standard he sets for inviting a contractor into his own. That standard travels in every Tru72 truck dispatched from the Portland office.
