David Bradfield – Founding Father, Principal
Father, Husband, Nevadan. David, a fifth generation Nevadan, grew up in the Truckee Meadows and graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno. Prior to his return to Reno, David had the pleasure of serving all over the world as an undercover CIA officer, notably in North Africa during the Arab Spring. Despite all the fun the CIA had to offer, the most exciting adventure he has ever undertaken is that of fatherhood and the adventures that his two boys take him on.
The honor of serving our country is great and he feels it is his responsibility to continue serving in his community, home, and family. He is humbled to have joined his great friends, fathers whom he respects immensely, on this project to bring our values and experiences on fatherhood to the masses and build a community dedicated to one of the most overshadowed and important parts of parenting: fatherhood.
David serves as the Director of Operations for Reno Dads.
Mike McDowell – Founding Father, Principal
Mike is a native Reno resident and a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno, with a degree in Journalism and Marketing. After graduating, Mike traveled the United States only to realize that he missed the mountains, the Truckee river and, most importantly, the people in northern Nevada. Since his return in 2005, he’s played the iconic role of advertising executive (minus the cigarette smoking and chauvinism).
The most important role he’s played, however, is that of husband to his wife and father to his two sons. The Reno Dads project is an opportunity for self-reflection, self-improvement and community building. No stranger to giving back to our community, Mike derives great joy from the opportunity to bring this community together in an effort to show support for our fathers and our families. Mike believes that a community of good fathers can have an incredible impact on this community’s future. If Reno is a heart of active fatherhood, it will be a better place for us all.
Mike serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Reno Dads Blog.
Jake Wiskerchen
Jake is a Marriage & Family Therapist and is founder of Zephyr Wellness, an innovative and philanthropic mental health practice serving greater northern Nevada.
Jake is a third generation native Nevadan whose family comes from both rural and urban areas. His father graduated from White Pine High School and his mother went to Reno High School while the entire family attended the University of Nevada. He has played sports his entire life and still enjoys doing so, along with backpacking, hunting, cooking, exploring his spiritual faith, and being dad and husband to his family.
Jake’s volunteer activities include: sitting as a Core Management Team member of the Health and Wellness Hub of Lyon and Storey Counties; volunteering with the Nevada Coalition for Suicide Prevention; participating as a member of the Hillside Foursquare Church council; and teaching psychological seminars at his fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon. Jake is also presently appointed by Governor Brian Sandoval to serve on the State of Nevada Board of Examiners for Marriage and Family Therapists and Clinical Professional Counselors and is currently the board’s Secretary-Treasurer.
Jonathan Salkoff – Podcast Director
Jonathan is not only new to the Reno Dads team, he’s new to Reno. He arrived here September of 2015 from the DC area, where he lived with his family since 1999. He’s excited to experience all the Reno area has to offer and hopes to offer a perspective on life as a single dad discovering northern Nevada with two active teenagers. Originally from New York City, he felt privileged to serve in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer and wireless communication officer after graduating from Annapolis. After grad school at Duke, he’s been in the wireless, software, and tech industry, and currently consults for a very fun software startup which is based in SF and Reno.
Navigating a new place, establishing a new normal, and building new relationships here in Nevada — “thanks to Reno Dads for giving me a chance to contribute to this great community and to give me the opportunity to strengthen my ties to the people that make this place so special.”
Joshua Shinn
Josh was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, the land of country music, baseball, and barbecue. However, he spent 26 years of his life living and working in Southern California, the land of summer concerts, street tacos, and beach cruisers. He graduated from California State University, San Bernardino with a B.A. in liberal studies and an M.A. in English composition. After graduating, he taught English abroad for a number of years for Central Texas College and the United States Navy. He currently teaches English for Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC) in Northern Reno.
Josh and his wife, Natalie, recently moved to Northern Nevada to start their family and are expecting their first son in September. The prospect of fatherhood for Josh is both exciting and humbling, especially after losing his father to cancer when he was only a boy. He relishes the opportunity to now share with his son a love of faith, family, nature, and sports. He also finds the task of modeling manhood for his son (and other future children) to be a monumental task that is best tackled alongside other like-minded men of character. Thus, the Reno Dads project is one step in his concerted effort to help sharpen his understanding of fatherhood.
Scott Oxarart
Scott was born in Carson City after his parents decided that California and Idaho, while both nice, didn’t stack up to the beauty of northern Nevada.
He’s been granted privileges to write for Reno Dads thanks to his daughter, who was born in April 2017.
Scott is a writer. His newspaper articles ran from 2006-13 in publications such as the Reno Gazette-Journal, Modesto Bee, Oregonian, Dallas Morning News and more. Now, he’s settled into a career as a communications, public relations and marketing professional.
Scott is Basque and met his wife, coincidentally, on a Basque culture tour throughout northern Spain and southern France — the trip of a lifetime. They married in May 2015. Scott hopes his daughter plays sports better than he did growing up, and more like his wife, who was all-league softball player and three-time state-champion cross country runner. Scott enjoys family time, playing golf and being outside.
Luigi Iuppa
Luigi offers a unique perspective to the Reno Dads Blog team. Unlike his fellow contributors, he is not from Nevada. Luigi has two beautiful daughters, so his perspective on fatherhood is that of Tom Hanks in a League of Their Own: “There’s no crying in baseball!” or whatever activity they happen to be doing.
Luigi was born and raised in Colorado and a graduate of Colorado College where he earned a degree in Mathematics. However, Luigi decided to not use his degree and signed up for culinary school in San Francisco where he met his wife. Once he decided to leave that career behind, Luigi went into mortgages during the housing crisis. But he always had an itch to be a cop, so he left lending and served Nevada for three years. In that time, Luigi had his two daughters and decided to go back to his second career where the worst injury he could get is a paper cut. Luigi enjoys being able to help families realize their dream of home ownership. In his spare time, you can find Luigi on a tennis court, in spandex on a road bike or, if his wife lets him, on the golf course.
LinkedIn – Professional Facebook Page
Reno Dads Stringers
Jonathan Barragan
Danny Cox
Rob Hill
Brett Porter
Willy Razo
Steve Scheetz
Dadvisory Committee
Michael Tragash
Mike Draper
(willing to accept non-Michaels, as well)