About Skinner
Dear Guest,
My name is Skinner Layne, and I am glad that you have made your way to my website and my blog. I maintain this site for a number of reasons. First, I find it a good way to allow people who know me to keep up with what I am doing and thinking, since I can sometimes be particularly bad about calling and visiting. Secondly, I have a sincere passion for the subjects I write about. You will find that most of the time I am writing about Religion, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Having majored in Economics, Political Science, and Philosophy in college at the University of Arkansas, I suppose it is natural that these are the things I continue to think about and read about. I hope that in some way you will be touched or otherwise affected by what I write.
Although raised and baptized as a Southern Baptist, I was confirmed as a member of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America and the broader Worldwide Anglican Communion in June 2007 at St. Matthew’s Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas. I am a member of, and regularly attend, the Church of the Incarnation on McKinney Avenue in Dallas, Texas, and consider it my home church.
I currently reside in Dallas and am President of Blue Star Equities, Inc., a corporate financial advisory firm that specializes in taking companies public through Alternative Public Offerings (APOs) working particularly in the Health Care, Technology, and Energy sectors. I previously served as a business strategy consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based consultancy Hinchcliffe & Company, a world-recognized thought leader in Enterprise 2.0. In 2005 I co-founded the NeXplore Corporation, a Dallas-area based Web 2.0 software development company and was part of the team that saw it through its Alternative Public Offering in 2007. I served one term on the Board of Directors after the APO, and at the time was the youngest person to serve on the Board of Directors of a publicly traded company in the United States.
I am an avid outdoorsman, and have spent three summers backpacking and rafting in the wilderness of Alaska. All of the photos you see throughout my site are pictures I have taken on my past adventures. I am also a classical violinist, trained from the age of 4 through high school in the Suzuki Method, I dabble in piano (my 6 years of lessons yielded less fruit than I would like to admit), and enjoy attending choral and instrumental music performances. I have dedicated a section of my site to my “favorites,” the things I would recommend to others in the form of music, books, poetry, essays, etc., and encourage you to browse them if you want to gain more insight into me.
I hope that you enjoy my site, and especially my blog. Be sure to click on my “connect” page to become my friend on Facebook, MySpace, and to gain access to my other various presences on the Web. Check back often for updates and please comment if you get the urge. I truly believe in the power of dialogue to make the world a better place.
Warmest Regards,
Skinner