Eleven years ago, Phil Hunter began working in OCM. He started out by "inspecting rooms and putting out fires," but he soon advanced to Operations Coordinator.
Phil supervises classroom activity and proactively resolves issues in classrooms, such as replacing and repairing furniture. "One of the big issues we've found is markers," Phil said. "If the custodians haven't placed markers in rooms, we hear about it. We try to get our service providers to look at our classrooms as a system. If one part fails the others are affected."
Phil also hires, trains, and supervises the OCM student staff and manages the room features database. Since joining OCM, Phil has served on the Development Team and as the lead on the Recognition Team.
Phil grew up in the Black Hills of Rapid City, South Dakota. "It's a tourist city, so basically everyone works in the tourism industry in one way or another," Phil said. He was no exception and has held a string of interesting jobs.
Growing up, his dad owned a motel called the "Lazy U" where Phil worked as a stripper. "I was the first one to go in the rooms and get them ready for the maid to clean," Phil explained. "I stripped the sheets and prepped the room." He even added his own touch to the tourism industry by developing a tourist map that listed all of the area's hotspots based on how many days people were in town.
He also once worked at a toy store. "It was an interesting job; I liked helping the customers, but a lot of people that worked there were really bitter," Phil said. "You'd think people in a toy store would be happy."
After a string of odd jobs, Phil received his bachelor's in speech communication and theatre from South Dakota State University. Seeking creative outlets, Phil did musical theatre, once playing Mr. Applegate in Damn Yankees. Eventually, he got bored with scripts and began doing improv and interactive theatre.
Phil's creativity is also seen in his work. Phil helped develop the student monitoring program that OCM uses to monitor the daily activity in each classroom. And, though he loves working in OCM, his dream job would be doing voice overs, which he currently records, along with music, in his in-home recording studio that he calls Nochy Mozg, which loosely translates to "reptile brain."
Phil is also working on writing a young adult novel, that he describes as "a fantasy/Spanish folklore adventure story that deals with the role of fate in our lives and the grey area between good and evil."
Currently, Phil lives in West St. Paul with his wife of 16 years, Jody, and his two kids, Adaline and Philip John (P.J.). He has a 16-year-old cat named Stein (originally paired with Frank before he passed away) and two new kittens named Snickers and Meep.
Fun Phil Facts:
If he could be any character for a day, Phil would be Groucho Marx and/or Darth Vader.
His favorite vacation spot is Yellowstone National Park during the off season.
He would love to visit Peru to see the Incan ruins.
His first concert was the Styx in 9th grade.
He likes the type of music played on The Current radio station.
His favorite author is Haruki Murakami.
His favorite movie is Spirited Away.
He likes to garden.
Harry Nilsson is one of his favorite singer/songwriters.
He did theatre, most often playing an older person or the funny sidekick.
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