About Todd Penland
I have been writing software since the mid-to-late 1980s. Over the course of a career that has taken me from California to Japan to Bosnia and Herzegovina and back to the Pacific Northwest, I have built systems for international organizations, federal agencies, pet care businesses, musicians, and real estate networks. The work has been varied. The approach has been consistent.
Where It Started
I studied Economics with a minor in Computer Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and served in the United States Air Force before beginning my professional career. My first years in the workforce were spent in mortgage banking, working for Guaranty Federal Savings Bank in Texas and First Interstate Mortgage in California. That grounding in business operations before I transitioned fully into technology shaped the way I have approached software development ever since.
I think like a business person first and a developer second. That matters.
The Career
My transition into international IT consulting brought me into contact with some of the most challenging and consequential projects I have ever worked on.
I spent nearly two years embedded in Texas Instruments’ semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities in Japan, developing specification systems for a complete LAN/WAN network redesign. I was then deployed to Sarajevo in 1996 as Director of Systems Development for the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), where I led the development of the software that managed Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first post-war election, from voter registration through to vote tabulation and live results presentation to the international media. Before returning to Bosnia, I spent a year at Unisys’ facility in Reston, Virginia on an automated deployment system for 70,000 workstations and 4,000 servers at Social Security Administration offices nationwide.
I returned to Bosnia as CIO of the Commission for Real Property Claims of Displaced Persons and Refugees (CRPC), where I led a team of 34 and oversaw the development of the software that collected over 319,000 property claims from displaced persons and refugees and helped restore property rights to families who had lost their homes during the war.
The Pet Care Chapter
In 2004, I owned and operated two pet grooming salons, boarding kennels, and daycares in California and Washington State. Because nothing on the market fit the way my businesses actually worked, I built my own management software. When I sold one of the salons in 2010, the software went with it. The current owner of that salon is still using it today.
That hands-on experience in pet care, combined with over a decade of running Port Orchard Parrots Plus and serving as Executive Director of Port Orchard Parrot Rescue and Sanctuary, is what drove me to build PETSAppeal: a comprehensive, web-based pet care management platform that covers the entire lifecycle of a pet and every service provider who cares for it.
I understand this industry because I work in it every day.
The Other Side
I am also a composer and musician. todd.penland.net is a catalog of over 439 original compositions spanning multiple genres. That site is also a software project in its own right, a custom-built WordPress platform with a persistent audio player, synchronized lyrics, a full music licensing system, and features that required solving problems no plugin could solve.
A client found me through that site. That is how this works.
The Parrots
I share my life with Zaire, Simba, and Africa (Congo African Grey Parrots), Buttercup (a Sun Conure), and Atlas (a Hyacinth Macaw). They are not subtle about reminding me when it is feeding time.
Let’s Talk
If you have a complex problem that needs careful thinking before careful building, I would like to hear about it.