Active transportation advocate. Record collector. Pizza enthusiast.#
Cole is a Senior School Administrator at the School of Cybernetics at Australian National University. He graduated in 2006 from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Music Business. After learning more about the music business through work at record labels and record stores, he recognised that music serves better as an immersive hobby than a career choice, though he does still greatly enjoy discovering and collecting music on a range of anachronistic formats.
Cole received his Master’s Degree in Urban and Regional Planning from University of Sydney, with an emphasis on local economic development and active transportation. After independently researching good principles of community and local economic development, he worked on a project for the NSW RTA studying the economic and social impacts of a highway bypass to the small coastal town of Karuah NSW. Cole was awarded the John Odongo Prize in Community and Economic Development for this work.
Cole returned to Chicago to work for the Active Transportation Alliance focusing on bicycling and active transportation advocacy, working with different community groups and police to educate Chicago residents about bicycling safety, policy, and infrastructure. He then entered the classroom to teach high schoolers about active transportation in their community.
In 2014 Cole joined a start-up apparel and design business called Harebrained Design, taking on the day-to-day operations and administration. Among the many projects Cole worked on at Harebrained, he is most proud of helping to create an irreverent NSFW trivia game that Penguin Publishing is turning into a book in 2022.
Cole’s three young daughters keep him plenty busy, though he does manage to find free time to continue perfecting recipes for different regional pizza varieties, including Detroit-style, Midwest ‘tavern-style’, and Neopolitan. He also enjoys gardening, camping, and teaching those aforementioned daughters valuable how-to’s, such as surreptitiously sneaking lollies, performing modern dance favourites such as “The Twist” and “The Mashed Potato”, and balancing spoons on the ends of their noses.