It’s no secret that the corporate world is becoming more and more suffocating. That is why people are finding ways to exit gracefully and break free from that structure. This is true for both Dmitry Smirnov and Dana McGlone who Stephen Jaye knows from his previous life as a meteorologist. Dmitry and Dana worked for the engineering sector and water resources sector. They join Stephen on today’s show to share how they went out on their own and built their own consulting business that allows them to choose the projects to work with in order to serve their clients better. Also, they talk about their possible partnership with a former employer on a fairly sizable project. Find out how that’s working out.
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Exiting Gracefully: How Dmitry Smirnov And Dana McGlone Started A Business And Partnering With A Former Employer To Serve Clients Better
Welcome to the show. I originally was a meteorologist. I studied Meteorology and was fascinated with the weather from a young age. A lot of meteorology jobs go in a lot of different directions, and a surprising number of them are all about coding or about writing code, or sometimes even manual data entry.
My guests are people I know from my previous life as a meteorologist who, in their pursuits, have found a way to break free from the corporate structure. As you know, the corporate structure is suffocating a lot of people. We have these old-school ideas, and I won’t go off too much on a tangent about it. I’ll let my guests do the talking. This episode’s guests are Dmitry Smirnov and Dana McGlone, who are the Cofounders of HydroMet Consulting.
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Dima and Dana, welcome to the program.
Thanks so much for having us. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Thanks.
To begin, tell us a little bit about your overall job functions. HydroMet Consulting, I want to orient everyone to what that means. Hydro means water, but maybe not everyone is familiar with what hydrometeorology is.
I would caveat all of this by saying that we are one year into our startup. We are a very fluid company now in terms of our vision. We don’t have a niche that has its upsides, but also its downsides, but in terms of what we do individually, I would call myself the Scientist, which involves a lot of coding, but also a lot of brainstorming of ideas and throwing stuff on the wall and seeing what hits both in terms of day-to-day operations as well as pursuits for the future.
It has been a dream project of ours to go out on our own for a while. Our focus is around heavy rainfall both forecasting and doing a little bit of post-season analysis for our clients. Both of our backgrounds overlap with mostly the engineering sector and water resources sector, so we like to define solutions for our clients that are both satisfactory to the meteorological side of science and solve the problems they’re having.
One of the things that drew me to science originally when I selected a major many years ago was the idea of discovering things, being creative, and problem-solving in a way more about figuring things out. In the corporate structure, do you feel like a lot of scientists in general end up more in the realm of trying to figure out how to make a program work rather than the actual process of scientific discovery and the inquisitiveness and curious mindedness that go along with it?
'I don't feel like I'm letting anyone down when I say, 'Nope I don't have time for that.' Obviously one (of the best benefits of owning your own business) is you get to set your own hours and chose your workload.' Click To TweetYeah. I think you’ve hit on one of the key limitations of being in a larger engineering firm like Dana and I both worked for a number of years. It’s the reality of the projects involved. A lot of the projects that the company did were with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, so it was a lot of manual effort in terms of fixing shapefile lines, fixing GIS, and minute details.
From the perspective of science, as we remember it from undergrad or grad school, it’s not reminiscent of that. The engineering and scientific fields, I think in general, in the private sector have unfortunately limited time to make pure discovery, and I think that is what led us to try our own thing. I feel like I’ve had more brainstorming sessions and open thoughts than I did previously when working the normal 40-hour workweek.
To go along with that, being able to do this on our own, we can control the pace. Sometimes, the corporate pace is very quick. We need something turned around, so you’re just looking for an immediate solution rather than looking for a long-term solution, a creative solution, or even fixing inefficiencies in something that you see. Being able to pick and choose where you want to put your time and effort without thinking about overhead all the time has been freeing creatively.
With that creative freeing, I feel like that’s a common cause of people feeling disengaged from their jobs. There’s no creativity and there’s someone else telling them what to do. Out of curiosity, do you have investors or other people at this point that you have to answer to that may have a little bit of input into your timelines?
Unfortunately, no. We don’t have any plants about that at the moment, but sometimes, depending on how things evolve, you may need to bring people in if you want to stay afloat. We don’t have any vision of bringing outside people in at this time. If it comes down to the fact where we have to bring in somebody else to stay afloat, then we’ll have to have a critical conversation about that.
One of the things that are motivating a lot of people, especially in our Millennial generation, is this desire for autonomy. I’m not saying that older generations didn’t want autonomy. Seeing it as a possibility, I think more in previous generations wasn’t there. What has this autonomy allowed you to do both in your consulting business as well as in life in general?
I think in terms of the practical stuff that people feel day-to-day, we have two projects that we’re working on as opposed to when we were, or at least for me personally when I was working for the engineering firm. I probably had anywhere from 4 to 8 things that I would have to put on my timesheet every week. Let’s say we’re working 40 hours here and there.
If you divide those 40 hours by 8 versus by 2, that’s a humongous difference in the amount of commitment to one project. I think that’s one of the biggest upsides. We’re becoming specialized on these projects and allowing ourselves, as Dana said, to tweak inefficiencies that have always bugged us in the past as well as to throw out new ideas because the field is evolving rapidly.
To go along with that, I’ve found it easier to say no, because we’re so highly specific in what we do and what we want to go after. I don’t feel like I’m letting anyone down. One of the best benefits is you get to set your own hours and choose your workload, and that’s something that we were both on the same page with. We have other interests outside of our 9:00 to 5:00 job, 40 hours a week. Sometimes, there are more hours that need to be put in, and sometimes, there are less. It’s a much more natural balance of reading the room and what needs to get done.
It’s also fantastic, first of all, that you found a way to not feel that guilt about saying no and to recognize that’s better for everyone. I think I would love for my audience to take that point out of this discussion and say, “Sometimes, you have to put that saying no into context.” Do you also feel the quality of the service you give to your customers? Is it much better because you’re doing the amount of projects that are going to work out best for everybody?
Yeah. We have been able to put more into our projects. With that, when you have the ability to have a little bit more time to spend on a project, you find these creative ideas, and being able to have this company on our own, we can go through and execute those ideas. We don’t have to go up a chain of command to give a little something extra to our clients, which is what we pride ourselves on. It’s constantly finding improvements and then implementing them that our client’s benefit.
I need to ask this. Do you ever have any friction as cofounders when you have differences in how to serve a client or which client is a good idea?
Fortunately, I would say we have been sailing smoothly so far. We’re only a year in, so in the future, there could be things that will arise, for sure. I think the beauty of what we have going on here is that we complement each other very well, which is a bigger topic. If you’re going to do this stuff and if you’re going to go out on your own, it’s hard to do it by yourself or with somebody that you might not get along with when you have to be on the phone with them all the time. That’s 40 hours a week, potentially. So far, I think we’re doing well, but I’m not going to say that’s going to last indefinitely because there might be a hiccup here and there, but I think we’re optimistic.
I think it helped that our relationship started as colleagues first. For background, all three of us go storm chasing together. Steven was my connection to Dmitry, initially, so having that colleague and then friendship level, and then back to a colleague has been very helpful. We understand how each other operate and we’re very different, which so far has been a huge asset, but we’ll likely have differences and priorities later on.
There’s an interesting backstory of when the company came together. Dana and I, over the last couple of years, were at an engineering firm. I started there first, and then she was brought on later. I helped hire her and at that time, I was starting to already consider leaving. At that point, it was 80/20 that I was going to stay still. I thought we’d be able to maybe grow the HydroMet line within the company but it soon became apparent to me that it was, in my best interest, to leave for a variety of work and life reasons.
Dana took over everything that I was doing, and for a while, I was like, “This is great. I feel like she’s going to be able to take this where I’ve always wanted to, but I never had the passion for it. Something was missing.” Eventually, we started talking again, and then she brought me in as an independent contractor. At that point, I felt like we had much above average complimentary benefits of working together, and I felt like our projects were crushing them.
I was like, “I wonder if it makes sense to start something on our own?” We already had some relationships with clients at that point. I think there’s probably a lot of luck involved here, but I would say overall, the fact that we’d complement each other in a lot of ways is crucial to this thing working long-term.
There’s luck, but there does require some mindset of being open, being present, and being able to see the things in front of you. I think everyone has the potential for luck at some point in their lives, but some people don’t see it. As a gambler, I always say that sometimes, succeeding in life is like rolling the dice. You need to roll boxcars, which is two sixes, and it’s a matter of rolling it enough times to eventually get that roll.
One of the best benefits of having your own business is setting your hours and choosing your workload. Click To TweetI second that. Luck is a weird thing. It seems like sometimes, it’s not as random as you think.
You’re putting yourself out there and being ready to receive. We’re being ready to take advantage of the opportunities that come about. One of the questions I have to ask is that if any readers out there are thinking about starting their own firm, thinking about going off on their own and trying to think about partnerships, because as I think a lot of people are discovering now, and as you’ve pointed out, it’s hard to do everything by yourself. It’s not easy.
I host this show by myself, but I have a lot of people who are helping me in one way or another, whether I hired them or whether they were just nice enough to introduce me to people and give me some advice. What would you say if someone is looking for who’s the right person or who are the right people to go into business with that they should be looking at from their perspective?
I think the first thing is you have to have somebody that’s trustworthy that you know is going to hold up their end of the bargain when you start to think about potential hesitations, putting something together or those deal-breakers. It’s also important that they’re good people, had built good relationships with clients in their past, and had kept up with their networks because what we found is we were in the business long enough that we’ve built these great connections so when we needed to reach out for some development work, we knew where to go.
We had a strong enough relationship with our clients that when we left, they allowed us to continue work. We’ve found some really useful online sites for like logo design, so it’s being aware of all of your connections. What do those people that you’re going to go into business with and what connections do they bring as well? You want to make as big a network as possible, so you have plenty of people to lean on.
We have not had to do any marketing yet because everything up to this point has been word of mouth, which I think is interesting because when it comes to marketing, I am an epic fail, so if I had to market, it probably wouldn’t survive. The point of this is that the conventional mindset, especially with social media, is that you have to do 100,000 different things. You have to market here, there, and everywhere. I feel like right now, we’re riding that old-school mentality of doing honest, hard work and delivering for clients. I guess the word is getting out, at least sufficiently enough, for us to stay in business for now.
One of the things I’m wondering about that is when it comes to figuring out what you need in a partnership, or what you need in a board, whether you want 4, 5, or 7 people, part of the equation seems like it’s going to be what your business needs at the time. If you need someone that was good at marketing, you might have the need to bring on another person, whether it be hiring or bringing another cofounder that has that expertise that knows how to get your thing up from the SEO, get word of mouth, or do those social media blasts and actually gets noticed.
I think that’s a discussion that we’ll have to have a little bit down the line, but now, what’s really neat about our situation is we have a good base of work. We’re enjoying working together, so we’re coming up with all of these new creative projects that we could potentially do, which means bringing on other people. We’re building a good base before we try to get too big, but we will need to bring on people when we start to better define our vision and where we want to go moving forward as we start to attract different types of employees and clients, but we haven’t had those discussions yet. We’re enjoying being in the moment and being able to do all of these fun and different types of projects.
To continue with what Dana was saying, I think one important thing is you have to swallow your pride in terms of not trying to do everything on your own. For me personally, that’s probably been one of the most important things that I’ve learned. Sometimes, it’s better to hire that expensive developer that you know is going to do a good job than trying to have to do it on your own and then have to bandage it up later. You can learn to code on YouTube, so it’s almost like this draw that’s like, “I don’t need anybody. YouTube and I can do everything.” That’s not true if you’re trying to make it long-term.
One last aspect about finding the right partners that I’m curious about, given your previous statements, in your words, what would be a red flag that you would observe about someone that makes you say, “I don’t want to partner with this person.”
I think the first thing I look at is their history. Do people like being around this person? The issues that people have had in the past are those issues that are with that person individually, or is this some trend that seems to be happening with a lot of people? I think the history of somebody in their career speaks volumes about who they are, where they’re going, and how they have grown and learned from their mistakes. Have they changed? Everybody has growth that they have to do personally and professionally, and who you are at the beginning of your career shouldn’t be who you are now, so I’m giving a little period of some grace if you will.
I agree with that. I guess the only other thing I would add, maybe because this is important to me, is passion. The person must be glowing with passion for whatever you’re doing. If they’re not, then it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, but to me, it’s a red flag. That’s a key part of what your show is trying to deliver. It’s like, “Would you rather be doing something else, and should you pursue that and cut your losses at some point?”
It is tough to be around people who would rather be doing something else. I know that there are at least 60 to 80 million people in the US alone that would rather be doing something else than whatever they wake up to every single morning, so that’s one of the areas that really hit me hard. One of the things I love about the guests that I bring on this episode or any episode of this show is because, on this show, everyone I’ve ever interviewed has loved talking about what they’re doing.
As soon as you get into the room, if you ask someone like, “What do you do? What’s your work?” I hate that question, but whatever version, you can see the difference between the person that comes in and goes, “I’m an East Coast regional strategist.” You’re like, “Let’s talk about something else. Let’s get lit right away,” or versus the person who you can tell is excited. They’re like, “I started this business. It’s great. We’re serving this and that. It’s important.”
One other question I have is about the process of leaving your engineering firm, going off on your own, and starting HydroMet Consulting. You talked about how it’s mostly been people that you’ve already had relationships with, so you didn’t have to do any marketing. What challenges did you encounter as far as getting in contact with your clients and bringing them on?
Initially, we had no idea what the clients would do, so we had a different starting point than what was true. We had these backup ideas, stuff we could build and ways we could bring in revenue on our first year or how long we could go without having a large project, and then we were lucky enough to leave on a good note.
I left the engineering company on a very good note and hoped to continue to work with them. We ended up working with them in 2020 on a project that was finishing up, so that goes back to the old saying, “Don’t burn any bridges.” Even though you might not want to be a part of the corporate structure, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have a great set of resources for you to use and to tap into. Always have your eyes open to opportunities, be flexible to take them and change, and go with the flow of the situation.
I would say we were lucky we didn’t have a ton of roadblocks. Dima is super savvy with setting up AWS servers, so that was probably our biggest, “We’re going to have to set up a bunch of scripts, get all of our stuff online, and get everything secure for our clients.” You want people that can step up to the plate and be comfortable with being uncomfortable. That’s where a lot of growth goes, but it’s that fine balance that goes back to what Dima was talking about earlier. You can’t be everything, and you have to know when you can step back and say, “I don’t want to take that on,” and when it’s okay to step outside your comfort zone and say, “I can go take that on.”
You want to make as big a network as possible so you have plenty of people to lean on. Click To TweetFor everyone’s reference, AWS stands for Amazon Web Services, which is the leader now in the field of cloud computing. If I go back to the lessons from a previous episode, it’s a very important high-income skill.
I think Dana covered it very well. For me, this has been part of a bigger sabbatical, if you will. I had finished my post-doc when I was 28. For the last few years or so, I feel like I’ve been chewing on all of these different ideas as to what is the thing that I want to do. Starting HydroMet Consulting was probably the last part of that sabbatical because once you start these kinds of things, the goal is to build inertia, which is something that’s arguably one of the biggest differences between what we do in the corporate world. Your inertia is your retirement account but you don’t have both financial equity as well as almost passionate equity in whatever you’re doing, so HydroMet Consulting answers both of those calls for me.
I don’t know how much you want to approach this topic, but I will say that for me, being able to peace out of the corporate world did involve a lot of savings. I know that certain people have different risk appetites for that thing. Some people say, “Peace out. I’m going to do whatever I want. I’ll live the van life or start a blog.” I’m not one of those kinds of people, and I don’t know if Dana can relate or where her thoughts are on that aspect.
I feel a lot of the same.
I’ve interviewed previous guests that have talked about the different risk appetites. One of the goals of this show is to make this idea of following your passions, your true North, and your alignment. It is something accessible to everybody, not just a few special people. There are a few people who are really risk-seeking or who are able to take that leap and go for it, but there are some other people that would rather have a little bit of a backstop, whether that would be a little bit of savings, a friend or family member willing to take them in, or a high dividend stock yield that they could live off of for a little while. Either way, I think the overall point is planning for it and that it’s not a quick decision.
One of the other aspects about leaving the corporate world, how do you make it so that you realize something is not for you and you can move on and not have any resentment on your side, and also not any resentment on their side and then saying, “We tried it out. They tried it out. They just didn’t love our setup. They didn’t want to be badgered about showing up at 8:17 when they’re supposed to get there at 8:15.”
I think one thing that might be interesting to share here is that we’re both meteorologists or climate scientists by training. I’m a Climate Scientist. Dana is what you refer to as a Meteorologist or Atmospheric Scientist. It’s a bit of an interesting niche outside of academia. A lot of these bigger engineering firms do have these weather departments, but they’re usually tiny, so it’s hard sometimes to grow the weather-specific business languages or the stuff that drives us.
In this case, at least to me personally, I think I recognized that it might be in the best interest of both us with this HydroMet Consulting group as well as the existing engineering firm to co-exist like that because ironically, we’re going to be possibly partnering with them on a fairly sizable project. As Dana said, we both left on a good note. They both saw what we were capable of doing with our passion. We always maintain good relationships. A lot of them are great people there, so there’s pretty much nothing personal about leaving in this case.
I think to go along with that, if there is any resentment, take time away or really step back from the situation so emotions aren’t running high and the resentment can start to wear off a little bit. You can start to see the pros, like, “Why were you there in the first place? What drove you for the first couple of years?” A lot of times, there are good resources at large corporations and good people that work there, and you don’t need to step away from it completely. You can just look a different relationship.
That’s the grander point in all of society. A maturity level which I reached earlier in life, and I wish a lot more people would start reaching now, is this idea that someone over there can be different from you, and that’s not a threat as long as they can be them and you can be you. We can find a way to work best with that.
If they want that structured corporate environment, let them have that structured corporate environment, but they also need to be cognizant that there are a lot of people that maybe don’t want that and don’t want a boss giving them advice on everything and want a little bit more creativity or a little bit more room to flex those creative muscles and get a little bit outside of the box and thinking.
That’s a great point. You and I have discussed this, and this part can’t be understated. For example, my wife works at a more stable 9:00 to 5:00 job, and I think that is her preferred type of work. I’m not going to try to sugarcoat and say that there hasn’t been friction with life instead of working in hers because there has. For me, the primary challenges are maybe the hours. My hours are usually everything outside of 9:00 to 5:00.
My best ideas come first thing in the morning or at 2:00 AM. Who knows? I can’t predict it, but I think one important thing at this point is I see the vision of maybe more free time finally starting to surface, which is a selling point. If you and your spouse are arguing about time, there has to be a reward for taking the risk of going out on your own. In this situation, I should have a little bit more free time in the next year or maybe starting next year indefinitely. Fingers crossed.
There was something that Dima said that we did these personality tests. There’s a whole psychology portion of working that I feel was overlooked in our undergraduate or graduate education. You have to know what makes you tick, how you work with others, and what potential conflicts you’ll have with different personality types, as well as your Einstein hours, if you will, where you get your good ideas and protect that time.
In the end, if you can maximize those Einstein hours, you can get to the end of what Dima was talking about like, “I figured out this idea in this company where I can eventually have a ton more free time,” which is invaluable, especially when you have young kids like they do, so they want to be able to have different things. We have different North arrows as well. We don’t have just one passion, so it gives you time to create a full fulfillment of your life.
What’s the best way to figure out your Einstein hours? I took one of those circadian rhythm tests, but I’ve also talked with people who have said that the best way to do it is to observe yourself and figure it out for yourself as opposed to taking a test.
I was laughing with Dima. I reorganized my entire office, walked in, and felt at ease sitting down. I was like, “This reinforces that my Einstein hours are in the morning before things have taken off and gotten crazy for the day. I feel very relaxed in this environment.” I think it’s observing when you’re not just doing your best work but when you are creating solutions for problems you’ve been chewing on over a period of time.
I have one last topic, and I want to make sure I cover it because people are probably expecting this of me and of this particular conversation. You specialize in extreme rainfall, and a lot of people now are concerned about whether or not the frequency or severity of this extreme rainfall is increasing over time due to the climate change phenomenon. First of all, does this factor into some of the work that you’re doing now? If so or if not, do you have any thoughts on what we’re observing and what we need to do to build some of that resiliency around this potential increase?
A person's career history speaks volumes about who they are, where they're going, and how they have grown and learned from their mistakes. Click To TweetYou could probably start a show just dedicated to this topic. I think in terms of the specifics of your question, I would say we don’t explicitly deal with climate change in our work now, although we have some side influence, if you will, on some of our seasonal predictions. One thing that we have a big passion about is street flow out West. It’s a big deal. Water resources are a huge topic, especially in California with the droughts. To that end, when we build our seasonal models, we do have to take into account whether or not there are longer-term trends.
I’m not going to get too far into the weeds here, but if there are trends, then using your 60 years of records could be problematic if there’s a giant downward trend in your streamflow because your model is going to keep saying there’s less and less streamflow available every year. You want to make sure that you identify that, and if there is a big trend downwards, you confirm whether or not it’s from stuff outside of climate change or actually climate change. If it is climate change, we probably would even want a forecast for that point because there are too many complications.
I think in terms of what we’ve done in the past, we’ve done studies where there’s a clear signal of much heavier rainfall. One particular study was out in Virginia Beach. It didn’t look at any projections. It simply looked at hundred years of data. This is extremely rare, but the results were so conclusive that we handed the report to the city municipal department and they upped their design standards, which means that’s essentially how much water they expect to be routing off into the sewer lines because they’re so concerned about the more frequent occurrence of standing water in the various place.
Here in Colorado, Dana can feel free to chime in here, but I have not seen anything outside of the spring snowmelt time getting earlier. I have not seen much to indicate that there are trends in streamflow. There are trends of temperature but trying to attribute those to urban heat islands or climate change is a big old box that you’re opening. If you want to go down the road, we’d be happy to chat, but I’m not sure how much you want to go into that.
Maybe we’ll cover it in another setting for sure. I think the interesting component about it is that most things are not as simplistic as a lot of people will like to make them out to be. People will like to say climate change, and oftentimes, whether it’s climate change or any other issue, any other observance, any other phenomenon that we see, whether it be atmospherically or culturally, usually you can’t just point to one thing. It requires being curious and diving deeper into it. For statistical purposes, there’s a tale to every distribution, and sometimes, you happen to have a really rare event.
I think I’m a fervent believer that climate change is real. At the same time, I don’t think the world is going to end in twelve years, so I’ll leave it at that.
What would you say for anyone that’s reading that wants to start their own firm or they’re where you were a few years ago where the ideas in their head, but they’re still thinking about a lot of things? What do you think is the number one thing that these people should be considering at this point in their journey?
I think there are a lot of factors, but you can only control so much risk, so get yourself to a place where you’re 80/20 and take a leap of faith. Put merit in your background, your connections, and you’ll find solutions. You’re a lot stronger and more resilient than you think. If you’re not, fake it until you make it. Make yourself uncomfortable. Try new things.
Put yourself out there, but you have to plan for it financially. Make sure you have the right partnerships and somewhat of a business plan to get you through that first year, but it’s only a couple of years of your life. If it doesn’t work out, you can find something else that does. If the benefits payout, which we’re hoping and the way that they will, it’s completely worth living a more meager lifestyle for a couple of years as you get it going.
I second that. I think if there was one thing that I have to say is don’t be afraid to fail, and even expect to fail. There’s going to be a certain percentage of a chance that you’re going to fail so if that makes you uncomfortable, then maybe it’s not quite time to start something yet.
As is the theme of the show, it all involves a certain mindset. It sounds like it’s a slightly different mindset when it comes to risk where you’re not being averse to risk but smart about risk, and that smart about risk could mean something different to everybody else. I sometimes lose it when people say gambling is too risky. When you buy a house, you’re gambling that neighborhood is going to keep getting better or it’s going to at least stay nice and not turn downward. These are awesome ideas to wrap up on.
First of all, I’d like to congratulate you both on the success that you’ve had so far with HydroMet Consulting. Dima and Dana, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you to all of our audience out there for tuning in and engaging in the community. I would like to encourage you to tune in again for more episodes where I will interview more people who have, in some capacity or another, follow something that they were passionate about as opposed to the red flag we talked about before, where you observe someone that doesn’t care about what they do.
Thanks so much, Steve
Thanks for having us. It has been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Important Links:
- HydroMet Consulting – LinkedIn
About Dmitry Smirnov
Dmitry (Dima) Smirnov received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Wisconsin in 2011, with a focus on seasonal predictability. After a brief post-doc stint where he primarily learned that he would never make a good “academic”, he moved away from academia to work at a Water Resources group within a large engineering firm. There, he realized that forecasting things was his passion.
He is now the Chief Scientist at HydroMet Consulting LLC, a start-up he co-founded in 2018, with a focus on client-specific weather and hydrologic forecasts, analyses and applications. Outside of work, Dima enjoys hiking, reading, gardening and spending time with his family. His best forecast of all time is that the sun will rise again.
About Dana McGlone
Dana McGlone is a meteorologist that specializes in operational and applied hydrometeorology. She received her MS degree in Atmospheric Science from the University at Albany (2011) where she studied regional climate change and modeling over the tropical Andes. Her meteorological interests include extreme precipitation events and heavy rainfall forecasting. You can also find her out on the plains during the spring chasing severe weather.
Dana recently joined forces with an old colleague at HydroMet Consulting, LLC where they specialize in solutions at the intersection of the hydrology and meteorology fields. The company is based out of sunny Colorado, so when she’s not in the office, Dana can typically be found in the mountains palling around with her new puppy.