André Bearfield Highlight

André Bearfield

Senior Director of Product,

IBM Blue Box

I’ve been very successful, and it’s not because I’m special—it’s just because I always focused on what I wanted.

About André

He was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas; the city had one of the top 10 highest crime rates in America when he was growing up.
Also went to college in Little Rock, where he originally studied biochemistry because he thought he wanted to become a doctor.
By his junior year, he knew he didn’t want to be a doctor, but he also didn’t have the money to change majors and spend more time in school, so he put his head down and pushed to finish.
After school, he realized he didn’t want to keep living in Little Rock, so he researched different cities, searching for a place with a low crime rate and an upward trend in growing technology.
He settled on Seattle, Washington; packed up all of his stuff in his car and drove halfway across the country without any plans for when he got to his destination.
Despite having to figure out where he was going to live and work, he was so excited about the change that he wasn’t worried.
Within a few weeks, he’d found a place to live and the perfect job for someone looking to learn more about technology.
Says that really successful people always take big risks; once he figured this out, he didn’t become a huge risk-taker overnight, but he started building more risk into his decisions.