Professional History
Nathan Albert Kuipers
b. November 8, 1987
Music Education
Gillette Stadium, Foxboro, Massachusetts, August 2005.
Click photo for audio performance.
My first experiences teaching were giving French horn lessons to younger students in high school. I find joy in the process of learning, and especially in learning together.
My family always had time for music. My father was a basso profundo singer with the community choir, and my mother kept her flute in our home, alongside her vinyl collection from days of working as a DJ on the radio in Detroit. I started playing French horn at the age of 10, and the instrument shaped my young adulthood.
During high school, I studied horn under Rachel (née Parker) Childers, then the TA for the University of Michigan horn studio, and now the second horn for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I attended the University of Tampa on a talent scholarship for French horn, majoring in music education, and toured the United States performing in the summers. In 2007 at age 19, I had my first teaching position with Durant High School’s band program, and continued teaching high school bands in Hillsborough County, Florida, through 2013.
Few things in this life compare to the joy of teaching music.
Customer Service
My work in the Customer Service industry started with my paper route in suburban Detroit, Michigan. I continued as a host, server, salesman, and bartender. As a student, my customer service background helped financially support my educational goals.
Tampa, Florida, January 2020
I am lucky to have built my experiences into a viable career in instructional design. Every person who dedicates their life to providing an economically valuable skill deserves to be fairly compensated. Every person providing an economically valuable skill deserves the tools needed to leverage that skill.
At their best, instructional designers provide people with the necessary tools to change their economic circumstances.
Activism
I have always believed that it is important to play an active role in the life of your community. Living as an openly LGBT individual has meant that basic rights are something that I, and the people I love most, must fight for. That means doing more than just saying the right things: it means playing a part in your community for the common good.
My first experience with this was working as an out-of-state intern with Hillary for President in 2008. Hitting the primary campaign trail, seeing the country, and meeting the individuals who lead our democracy was the experience of a lifetime. I was most impacted by the elderly women who volunteered in the offices in Indiana and South Dakota, who had spent their lifetimes fighting for women’s rights and saw the first serious female Presidential candidate in American history. The lessons and the warmth they brought to those long days are something I treasure still.
In 2012, I stayed closer to home, and was involved in a local State House campaign. This was my first experience being paid for political work (at minimum wage). It was invigorating to work on a competitive race in a theatre that is nationally visible. It was incredibly painful to lose our race by roughly 1,000 votes, or about 1%.
Tampa, Florida, June 2016
Tampa, Florida, June 2016
In 2016 my political efforts shifted from working with the Democratic Party to working with non-partisan non-profit organizations. I found the work fulfilling and rewarding because it gave me an opportunity to work with marginalized populations, and to learn my way around the different minority neighborhoods of Tampa.
In 2016 I was Lead Field Organizer for the Community Voters Project, a division of the Fund for the Public Interest. CVP focused on performing voter registrations in Black and Hispanophone segments of Tampa Bay. In 2020, I was a Field Organizer for Hard Knocks LLC, which was focused on outreach in Black communities and coordinating with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, an organization ensuring that felons reintegrate to society by becoming voters.
Instructional Design
In 2015, I transitioned from primarily working in education to sales, trying to immediately increase my personal income. I bounced around a few different businesses before I settled in at College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving in 2017. It was not long with the organization before I became a top performer.
After a year and a half at the organization, there was an opening for a training position. I felt I was an ideal fit because of my educational background. This role ended up taking on far more than the job description, and gave me a foundation to build my career as a Learning and Development Consultant. Many of the training modules I designed at CHHJ are still in use today.