Profile
Jim D'Amico
Strategic Staffing Manager
BISSELL Home Care, Inc.
I was completely unfamiliar with West Michigan -- to me "Michigan" meant Detroit, because I heard about Detroit in the news all the time with rampant unemployment, a lot of crime, a place people were fleeing. But when I got to West Michigan, people were very quick to tell me this isn't Detroit and I saw that. I came here from rural Minnesota for a job interview -- I had a whole day to tour around and I fell in love with West Michigan.
My wife Deborah and I are originally from Ohio (Cleveland and Toledo), but before we moved to West Michigan we were working and living in a southwest Minnesota town 70 miles from the nearest expressway. One of the things we loved about Minnesota is how nice everybody is, and we found that people here are every bit as nice. But we missed the diversity of options, like arts, dining and being able to go see live theater and concerts. We also missed the ethnic diversity. Having all these things again was the big draw for me.
We moved to West Michigan in June 2010, and since then we've done a lot of things. Deborah started a wine group that now has over 90 members. We joined Frederik Meijer gardens and go to the summer concerts there. We're kite people and we participated in the Grand Rapids kite festival, which was a lot of fun.
I'm an alumnus of the Second City Training School in Cleveland and have performed standup all over the place, so I really loved attending LaughFest in Grand Rapids last spring. We've been to ArtPrize and loved that, too. We're definitely Foodies, and we're going through a list of restaurants we want to try because there are so many great ones in the area, from upscale restaurants to mom and pops. And we've been to several events at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts and really love the vibe there.
I urge others not to listen to the bad press Michigan has gotten over the years, it doesn't pertain here. In West Michigan, you can live in the city or you can live in the country, which is pretty unique. I encourage anyone who does move here to get out and meet people. Everyone is really friendly and we've made a lot of great friends.
My wife and I were both born and raised in Sri Lanka but have lived for most of our lives in the USA. I moved to the US for my graduate education and following my doctoral training at the University of Illinois I also served as a member of the faculty and lived in the Chicago suburbs for the past ...
MORE
I was completely unfamiliar with West Michigan -- to me "Michigan" meant Detroit, because I heard about Detroit in the news all the time with rampant unemployment, a lot of crime, a place people were fleeing. But when I got to West Michigan, people were very quick to tell me this isn't...
MORE
I'm originally from Puerto Rico and have been in the United States for the past 23 years. Before coming here, I lived all over -- I went to school in Boston, then moved to New York, and then Texas while I worked in Mexico. I also lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.I came to We...
MORE
I never wanted to move from Chicago because our families are there and we have no one here in West Michigan, but my husband, Acy, got a promotion he couldn't afford to pass up, so we moved here. It's very different than Chicago because it's quiet. That was a big adjustment because we w...
MORE
My husband, Rick, and I love skiing, so when we were thinking about moving to West Michigan the first thing we did was look up the annual snowfall -- we wanted to be in a place where it's snowy in the winter and beautiful in the summer. Hands down, the summers in West Michigan are unbeatable. It ...
MORE
My husband and I are both Michigan natives but we moved to Baltimore, Maryland and then Hawaii for my job with the federal government. After having two children and being so far from family, we really wanted to move back so our kids could get to know their extended family.
Both my husband and I...
MORE
When my husband said, "What do you think about living in Grand Rapids, Michigan?" I said, "Michigan? Why would I want to go to Michigan? It's really, really cold up there." My husband is a cancer researcher who was recruited by the Michigan State University College of Human M...
MORE
When I was told I'd be interviewing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, my original thought was it was a suburb of Detroit. I had to check it out on the map. I remember telling my wife that I liked the company, but I wasn't sure of the area because it sounded rather small. She convinced me to continue w...
MORE
My husband, Paul, and I were living in a Chicago suburb -- I was working for a large advertising firm, was pregnant for our second child and Paul was being promoted in his company -- and we realized that he was going to miss the critical years with our kids due to the commute time and long work...
MORE
I live in Grand Haven on the lakeshore, but grew up on the east side of Detroit. I first lived in West Michigan while attending Grand Valley State University and after graduation, and then I moved back to Detroit for 12 years. But I always had a kind of yearning to get back to West Michigan.&nbs...
MORE