Shining Star: Francis Whitt

Francis, business analyst, finance at Orion — and our August Shining Star — shares how he turned tinkering with gadgets into a side hustle — and he tells us more about his ample vinyl collection.

Where are you from?
I was born in West Covina, California but moved when I was four to the Philippines. I spent most of my childhood there before moving to Guam, a tiny island in Micronesia, for a year — and then moved to New Jersey in 2002.

What company did you last work for?
I worked for American Financial Resources as a Business System Analyst. It was more of a traditional IT role; I mostly provided support to our end-users and did development on the various software we were using.

What are your hobbies?
I do a lot of indoor rock climbing in my spare time. I was close to getting strong enough to do some outdoor climbing, but then the pandemic. Recently I’ve really gotten into record collecting — I had started with a small handful from some of my favorite artists, but this past year my collection has ballooned to more than 80 records from various genres and artists. I also like to tinker around — building model kits, building computers (a hobby that used to be a side job for me), and sometimes unsuccessfully putting random electronics back together.

Something interesting that people don’t often know about you.
When I have spare time, I compete in tournaments for fighting games (think Street Fighter, Tekken, etc.) These tournaments have blown up in the past couple of years, especially with eSports becoming the big thing right now. I used to travel a lot around the east coast and in the Chicago area to attend these tournaments, most of them being the big regional ones — and year over year, the attendance skyrockets with the venues and prize pools being larger. I have yet to win. The best I’ve done is top 32, but hey: maybe one day!

What’s your favorite sports team?
Born and raised a 49ers fan. Let’s go Niners!