San Marcos, CA – Every Tuesday morning, Samaritan CEO Bruce Behymer heads to his childrens’ school where he volunteers as a math tutor. “Sometimes when I am helping a very bright student with calculus problems, I’m still pondering the solution as I’m calling it a day.” Bruce commented. Engineering and math have always been Bruce’s great loves, and he enjoys sharing his experience and knowledge to help inspire promising students to advance in those areas.
Bruce has always been enthusiastically involved with many volunteer projects. In addition to tutoring, he has been a soccer coach and a scout leader for twenty years. The proud father of six children, Bruce has always been very involved in their lives.
After graduating from high school, he studied Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. “Caltech was a challenging, humbling, and fun place where I was exposed to amazing things. I had two Nobel Prize winners as professors, and I even got to discover and name an asteroid. I named it after my father as thanks for my education”, said Bruce.
After his freshman year, Bruce served a two year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the interior of Guatemala. While there, he learned to speak K’ekchi, a Mayan dialect. Bruce also speaks fluent Spanish.
At the completion of his mission, Bruce returned to Caltech to finish his degree. Upon graduation, he found employment with a company named State of the Art Consulting (STAC), which was founded in 1983 by some Caltech friends. “At STAC, we worked as professional inventors. People would come to us with an idea and ask if we could figure out how to make it. It was a lot of fun because every three or four months, we’d be working on something completely different”, said Bruce. “After a while, we wanted to make our own products. We hit a home run with a data compression product for hard disks called Stacker, which eventually had two million users and a 90 percent market share. Stacker won PC Magazine’s Technical Excellence award twice.
While at STAC, Bruce worked as a programmer, team leader, technical evangelist, product manager, and market research manager. After fourteen years, Bruce made the decision to attend graduate school and work on a Masters in Business Administration. In 2000, as part of a team competing with business students from around the world, he won San Diego State’s Business Plan Competition.
While at school, he was contacted through friends by Todd McMullin, one of the founders of Samaritan Software, which had been formed in 1997. Bruce joined the company and inaugurated a quality control department. He later agreed to serve as CEO.
Bruce sees a bright future ahead for Samaritan, and he continues to take an active role in developing and improving Samaritan’s product line. He believes that the company can remain the industry leader in volunteer management software, thanks to an innovative and dedicated staff. “We have a fantastic team. They’re a lot of fun to work with”, Bruce stated.
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