Get to Know Step Schwarz: Director of All Things Technical

Let’s give a hearty welcome to Step Schwarz. He joined the 3 Media Web team in early June and has already made his mark. Each day, he wrangles all sorts of technology issues–for us internally as well as for all of our wonderful clients.

Computers are very cool

Step has experienced the entire digital marketing revolution. He lives and breathes all things technology. Starting out in tech, he went to Ireland on a student visa and spent three years in an electronics factory patching legacy FORTRAN code for lean manufacturing, Y2K, and the Euro, and did more IT stuff than he can remember.

From there, he transitioned to agency life in New England, spending the last 21 years almost all at the same agency, CGI Interactive, with a brief stint at Captains of Industry. During that time he mostly worked on development and animation, partnering with IT, ops, project management, and marketing.

Supporting clients and fixing things whenever needed

Step Schwarz has kept track of what’s happening at our agency for a while–always reading our social posts and liking what he saw in our culture. He’s pretty humble about the impact he’s having on our company and our client projects. “I’m here to help the chief helper, Marc, our founder,” he says. “I have a lot of expertise and knowledge about a wide range of technical things. People pull me in whenever they have a question. I keep very busy, jumping from person to person and task to task and helping out wherever I can.”

Is there code for that?

Originally from Pennsylvania Dutch country, Step has lived in Atlanta, upstate New York, and across Massachusetts. He and his fiancée, Melissa, now reside in Warwick, RI–in a home they share with their three cats, Avry, Sage, and Ellie.

And he has always loved computers, reminiscing about his first Atari 400, and, of course, his first Apple. In middle and high school, he made adventure games with BASIC, got into hypermedia, and started a bulletin board system (BBS), called TotallyBored.

In the hours when he’s not working or hacking away on an interesting project on an Apple II, he loves to get creative, sometimes doing generative art on the computer and sometimes painting. In fact, one of his first dates with Melissa was helping her paint a mural.

He also loves to travel, with a special fondness for exploring all the beauty that the State and National Parks across the country have to offer–but don’t ask him to choose a favorite. His most recent trip had him adventuring in Mesa Verde and Moab, checking out cliff dwellings and taking in the desert southwest. He also notes that the first thing he does when planning a trip is look for art museums and vegetarian food. So he eats well and appreciates the view no matter where he is.

So, that’s Step Schwarz in a nutshell, originally Stephen, but please don’t ever call him Steve. During work hours, you’ll find him happily using his brain and feeling good at the end of the day because he’s helped people. He looks forward to assisting wherever he can and making sure all of our clients get the technical support they need.