Who We Are
We took the long way around.
GiftMatch Compass was built by two people who’ve held more jobs than they can count on two hands, earned degrees they no longer use, and spent more time than they’d like to admit wondering if they were actually in the right place.
Between us we’ve held more jobs than we can count on two hands, earned degrees we no longer use, switched careers mid-stream, and spent more time than we’d like to admit wondering if we were actually in the right place.
“We didn’t build this because we read about the career clarity problem. We lived it.”
The two of us
Different roads, same recognition—that the tools available when it mattered most weren’t built for the weight of the decision.
Tyler spent over ten years in education, working in special education, mentoring high school students, college students, and young adults, and eventually leading as a principal. He watched smart, capable people make some of the biggest decisions of their lives based on pressure, guesswork, and what sounded reasonable to the people around them. At 35 he made a significant career change himself and had to sit with the hard question of what kind of work he was actually built for. That experience made the problem personal in a way that never left him.
Lex took a different road. Before finding his way into programming he worked at least a dozen different jobs, taught middle school, mentored students and adults, and eventually made a career switch into software through a bootcamp. He knows what it feels like to hold an expensive degree you have lost the passion to use, to start over from somewhere unexpected, and to slowly find your footing in work that actually fits who you are. The winding path taught him more than any straight one would have.
Why we started GiftMatch Compass
We started GiftMatch Compass because the tools available to people facing career decisions have never matched the weight of the decision itself. A twenty-question quiz that assigns you a color or a four-letter type is not guidance. Real clarity requires understanding how you actually think, what environments let you do your best work, what drives you, and what quietly drains you. It requires something that takes you seriously as an individual.
That is what we set out to build. Not because it was a clever business idea—though we believe in it deeply—but because we both spent years wishing something like this had existed when we needed it most.
We want to help people find work they were actually made to do. Work that fits not just their resume but who they are.
