Why I Came Back to Iowa for a Career in Tech

Beau Gibbs is a sales director at V-Soft Consulting. He recently moved back to Iowa after spending several years in Colorado and Canada. Below, Beau discusses the benefits of moving his career and family back to Iowa.

Why did you leave Iowa?

After UNI I played football up in Canada, in Calgary. I liked the outdoorsy feel, the mountains, the whole atmosphere of the outdoor mentality. When I moved back to the states, I had a lot of friends living in Colorado, so I thought let’s move out there.

What brought you back to Iowa?

My family is still here. My high school friends are still here. I grew up on a farm in the country, and it’s just so peaceful. I enjoyed that. I have a daughter, and I wanted to have her grow up next to her grandparents as I did. Now that we are back, we have help going out and doing things on the weekends. If I want to take the weekend away, I have the support of grandparents. We didn’t have friends or family close to us in Colorado that could help us, so we found ourselves staying home quite a bit.

Besides family, what other parts of Iowa did you miss?

I missed the lakes. In Colorado, they have a couple of reservoirs, but it gets so packed that you park on the beach and hang out. But I like the water activities, going down to the lake and spending time with family down there. I got into biking quite a bit, and it’s tough at the elevation out there. Iowa has a pretty solid biking system, especially in the Cedar Valley. You can ride all over. We like to grab a beer at the bar and get back on the trail.

How did social media open your eyes to what’s going on in Iowa?

On the events page on Facebook or things happening, you see a lot of people interested in different events. I didn’t know Iowa had things like pumpkin patches, wine tasting or sip n paint, different activities like Denver has to offer. So following social media and seeing all the different things, looking at what breweries are doing and looking at 5ks and stuff like that, there are a lot of different activities that are out there.

What advice would you give to someone contemplating moving back to Iowa?

For me, I was very on the fence. Denver had a lot to offer, but I didn’t get to do a lot of that stuff because there was just so many people. There’s the headache of living in a bigger city, just the traffic and everything. But here if I want to go and do some of these events that I find on social media, it’s not like I’m going to fight crowds to go an enjoy an event. Really weigh the pros and cons. What are you doing today? What would you miss about this place? Denver is never going to go away. I can always go back to visit. But living here in Iowa has a lot of similar vibes as I still had out in Colorado.