About
Glen Cantrell spent twenty years building and leading software development teams in companies large, small, and occasionally doomed, HP and Oracle among them, before moving to a mountain town on California's Highway 108 and becoming president of its all-volunteer Chamber of Commerce, an arrangement that made sense at the time.
He grew up in a small Kansas town with a courthouse square, the kind people call quaint right up until a big-box store moves in, and he has kept a soft spot ever since for the people behind the counters. Nowadays he consults on organizational strategy and technology delivery for state and local government agencies.
He lives in Twain Harte with his husband, Michael, and their three dogs, at least one of whom has eaten part of the manuscript. Embracing the Local: Extension Cords and All is his first book.
Featured Work
Embracing the Local: Extension Cords and All
Embracing the Local: Extension Cords and All is a funny, candid memoir about what happened when organizational strategy consultant Glen Cantrell accidentally became president of an all-volunteer Chamber of Commerce in a small California mountain community. What begins as an effort to help local businesses becomes an education in volunteerism, belonging, institutional fragility, and the people who quietly hold communities together. Along the way, Cantrell learns that communities are not organizations to be fixed, leadership is not the same as being indispensable, and sometimes serving a place well means building something that can survive without you.
