Born in Shelbyville, Indiana in 1976, Derek moved to Gig Harbor with his family 1989. He attended elementary, middle school, and high school in the Peninsula School District until graduating in 1994 from Gig Harbor High School and then attending the University of Washington.
After a several years in banking & governmental affairs, Derek started Empression Media, a marketing and PR firm serving small businesses and non-profits.
Derek was first elected to the Gig Harbor City Council in 1997 at the age of 21 and won re-election 3 times since. In addition to chairing the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee, he serves on the Planning/Building & Finance Committees. For the past 8 years he has represented Gig Harbor on the Pierce County Regional Council and 3 years representing Pierce County cities (other than Tacoma) on the Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board. He’s also the small cities representative on Pierce Transit Board of Commissioners and serves on the Executive Committee.
Outside of government Derek is a trustee for Forterra, formerly Cascade Land Conservancy, and an ex officio member of Pierce County’s Tourism Promotion Area Board.
“Bringing family wage jobs to the peninsulas is critical to our long term economic viability” It would be nice if you and council could convince the mayor that the place to start is the city employees. Unstead of temp employees and contract workers who have no stake in the community, bring a few people back. Not all, but a few, so the committed employees who survived the arbitrary lawoffs dont have to do 4 times the work for the same money. You guys have really created a labor problem of your very own, but will not admit it.