My name is Gabe Oosthuysen; I am 24 years old and live in McGregor, Iowa. My Family and I moved to the United States from South Africa eight years ago, on the f
ourth of July. I would say that this is a pretty amazing day to come to the USA. It was a 22 hour flight from South Africa and by the time we landed in Chicago we were about ready to book into a hotel and take a good long nap. We actually lived in Wausau, Wisconsin and Darlington Wisconsin for a while before we moved to McGregor, Iowa. We have always loved this small, beautiful, and charming town and after moving away for three years decided to move back.
I attended MFL Mar Mac High School from my sophomore year until graduation. I graduated early in January 2002, but waited until May to walk through the graduation ceremony with my classmates. At that time I worked for McGregor Woodworks and continued my full-time employment with them until August of 2002 when I started college.
I started my post-secondary education at Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC). By far the best experience any student can ask for while studying. During my time at NICC I became involved in a lot of student activities like Student Senate, Business Professionals of America (BPA) and Phi Theta Kappa. I also participated in Adopt-A-Highway, Can Mountain Day, Food and Coat drives, and many other activities.
At NICC I served as:
- BPA National President 2004-2005
- BPA Local President 2002-2004
- Student Senate President 2003-2004
- Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society Local Co-President 2003-2004
- National BPA Executive Vice President 2003-2004
I graduated from NICC with an Associate in Arts and an Associate in Business Administration degrees. After my education at NICC I transferred to one of the schools that have been my dream school since high school, Drake University. At Drake I pursued my Bachelors in Accounting and Finance. Since high school I have always liked Accounting, and Finance just seemed like a good idea to add to the degree since they are so closely related to each other. During my time at Drake I spend the first year focusing on my studies as well as traveling all across the United States as President of BPA. I went to Washington DC twice to meet with congressmen/woman and senators. I also spend one time in a web cast with the head of education talking about why student organizations are important to students and why they should not cut our funding. I traveled to Columbus, OH; Cincinnati, OH; Dallas, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Anaheim, CA and many local trips in the state of Iowa. It was a challenge keeping my grades up while being gone for three weeks in a row, but truly an experience I will not give up. I graduated from Drake University in May 2004 with my BSBA in Accounting and Finance.
The school life was done and my focus was on starting my career in the accounting or banking industry. Come to find out that you need to have experience before an accounting firm or a bank will hire you, and nobody wants to give you experience if you don't have experience, confusion hey!
A position opened up close to home as an assistant manager for Culver's of Decorah. I was truly excited and wanted to try out the idea of being a manager. After my three month training, we opened the store in Decorah Iowa on October 16, 2006. It was one of the craziest days in my life. We were over staffed (since many people were still training) and cars were backed up into the street. The police showed up at one point to direct traffic into the Culver's parking lot. It made me realize that management (working with people) was the thing I really enjoyed doing.
After six months at Culver's an opportunity came up for me to get my own Kwik Trip store and be a Store manager. This position offered a job with a well established company, with great benefits, great salary, great people, and exceptional training. On top of it all I was going to have my own store and be in charge of it all at the age of 23. I was really nervous and did not know what was going to happen. It all seemed exciting and jet on the other side nerve wrecking. While working hard to build and improve the store I decided to go back to school and work on my master’s degree. I found out about Upper Iowa Universities' Saturday MBA program in Madison, Wisconsin. I decided to embark on this new adventure on my day off. Currently I am at UIU working towards my MBA in Organizational Development. In about a year and a half I should be done and will have to see where my life will take me from there.
Currently I am working on my own business, doing web design. I started my web designing at NICC and always did it on the side as a hobby. Lately I have been putting a larger focus on the idea of making it my own business. There is nothing like working for yourself. Hopefully after I get my MBA I could pursue my law degree, another one of my long-term goals. In the mean time I would like to focus on my business since that is what is going to have to pay for that law degree, ha, ha! If you would like to know anything else please feel free to contact me and ask me.
Until further development,
Gabe
