Meet Your Salesperson: Shaun MacIntosh
Get to know Propeller’s world-class team in our new, ongoing employee spotlight series. Today, we talk to Shaun MacIntosh, who serves as a landfill solutions lead on the sales team and is based out of our Denver, Colorado, office.
What do you do at Propeller?
My job at Propeller is to work with existing and potential landfills customer to achieve their desired outcome from our hardware and software products. Whether it’s understanding how their current fill rate impacts future site and cell development or how our produced topos can play well with their mapping machines to increase density, I’m striving to help them with all of it.
What’s your career background?
Propeller is actually my first real job. Prior to this, I was in a lot of academic research-type positions. My background is in science, specifically biology. I was doing a lot of work in ecology in the summer months during college—both field and lab research. I’ve spent time in southeastern Peru, in the Amazon, and I’ve also done research in eastern Canada catching sturgeon. It’s been a pretty broad array of work.
Before working at Propeller, what’s the strangest or most interesting job you’ve held?
I was a swamper for a company in northwestern Canada. Basically, my job was to operate a vacuum truck that would go in on oil plants and clean up spills and contaminated materials.
A lot of the time that would involve me getting fully suited up in a hazmat suit with an oxygen mask and everything. Really, just crawling on the ground, sucking up this material, or even going into large oil vats and hosing them down. “Dangerous vacuuming” is a good way to put it.
Where are you from?
I’m from Nova Scotia. I grew up in a place called New Glasgow—Nova Scotia being “New Scotland.” It’s a coastal place, looks very much like Scotland. Primarily lived there my whole life. I went to Acadia University, which is in a town called Wolfville. Prior to me relocating to Denver, I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Any fun facts, talents, or superpowers to share?
I love terrible taxidermy. For a while, I manufactured terrible taxidermy with googly-eyes from the dollar store, but I also just like it. Someday, I’ll get back to it.
What’s your favorite Propeller memory/win?
My favorite memory is all of Team North America cramming into an apartment back when we were first getting up and running in Denver. My first time ever to Denver saw me rolling up and sleeping on a couch in a room I shared with Richard. This was before we moved into our big office in RiNo, and we were in a coworking space downtown. Our office there was one room with two desks and six people. It was just us, elbow to elbow, in this windowless office. It was a lot of team bonding, getting to spend tons of time with the small team.
Our holiday party last year was also pretty great. We went go karting. After most people did their initial three laps and stopped to grab a beer, me, Rory, and Francis—the two co-founders—were just very competitive. We were the last three on the track and just flooring it, trying to go faster and faster. I think Rory won.
If you could be any piece of worksite equipment, what would you be?
I’d be a bulldozer, like a D11. Just a massive, massive dozer on tracks.
If you could attend any professional sports game, what would it be and why?
I’d love to see a lacrosse game. Box lacrosse is a big sport in Canada; it’s our national sport. I’ve never been able to go, but it’s in a hockey stadium and it gets extremely rowdy. Or, I’d love to do to a professional darts game. People also get very intoxicated and the announcer yells, “One hundred and eighty!” and everyone’s like, “Yeaaaaaaaah!” And they just throw their beer up in the air. It’s crazy.
Do you have an office nickname? What is it?
I share a nickname with Matt—we’re both called “the Canucks.” A few people call me Shaunathan or Shaunie, too.
If you could do any job on a worksite for just one day, which would you choose?
I’d love to do blasting. I’d love to set a charge and blow something up at a mine or quarry.
Want to join our team? We’re hiring!