My Personal Vita Mission

When you start a company, many people ask you “What you do” but more times than not, the “Why” is never asked.

Vita Inclinata Technologies has continued to grow and launch for the stars. This is purely due to the amazing work of the Vita team to include my founder and business partner Derek Sikora.

When things get hard in entrepreneurship, as a startup executive you must look to your mission. When I mentor fellow entrepreneurs, I point out the fact that should you not have a mission to hold on to, the trials and tribulations of a startup get that much harder.

My mission has been derived from my work in Search and Rescue, but more specifically from the events of September 25th, 2011 with the death of Angie on Angels Rest Trail in the Columbia River Gorge.

This was the series of events….

It was 0719 on a Sunday morning. I was 17 years old and President of the Multnomah County Search and Rescue Team. I had spent the night at Hayden Hunter’s house socializing until late. I got the call that a missing woman was missing at Angels Rest trail and had not been seen since Friday and that I needed to organize the SAR crew.

We organized and arrived at the trail head around 1000 hrs. I was assigned two members (age 16 and 15) to my team as the blitz team to go try to find her at her last known position. We proceeded up the trail and received first indication from another hiker that Angie was still up on the trail somewhere.

Around 1100 hours, we arrived at the top of the trail and found her! It was a win, we were successful, but then it got weird…. Angie didn’t want to come down. She just wanted to hang out at Angels Rest. We proceeded to sit with her and chat while the Sheriff began to walk up the trail.

About an hour passed. During that time, we talked about her undergraduate work and her time traveling the world to help kids learn English. It was all fun discussion…. But something still wasn’t right. I went to get on the radio asking base where the Sheriff was. Completed the radio transmission and watched as Angie jumped from the cliff side of Angel’s Rest (about 150 feet). Jeremy (one of my team members) dived for her to no avail. I watched as she fell and had a split moment of fear for Jeremy going with her. Thankfully he didn’t. We were all shocked, didn’t know what to do, I dropped to my knees, and the search immediately turned to a much different mission.

Yesterday, August 4th I went to climb Angels Rest for the first time in almost 9 years. I sat at the very place where it occurred and had plenty of reflection for my life both personally and professionally. As I thought about the effect that this particular Sunday had on me, I can’t help but think about what it has done for Vita and the mission behind it. I learned my core mission that I take to Vita Inclinata every single day:

“You can die at any time; so what are you doing today, to change tomorrow?”

In the back of our facility at Vita we have the saying “Building technology that brings people home every time.” This statement is the corporate codification of the mission that Angie developed within me. Whereby no matter the trial, the tribulation, the struggle, or the excitement; the mission is the foundation of everything we do.

The Vita Team has done an amazing job of codifying that mission and I am excited to see the mission of Vita continue to succeed. I know we are living up to the mission that Angie instilled in me; to always be working to change tomorrow.