On September 6, 2020, we lost our dear friend and colleague Scott Muggli to a battle with cancer. Many of our clients and partners worked with Scott over the years and if you did it became immediately apparent how important he was to our company.
I first met Scott as a project manager for a Valtira customer. We worked closely together during that time, until the summer of 2013 when he was furloughed for 60 days. That summer I kept pinging him every so often as he worked on his boat in Bayfield, where modern life just hasn’t made it, making him hard to get a hold of.
Eventually, his furlough was over and Scott found himself looking for a new opportunity. So I offered him a job which he very reluctantly agreed to (maybe he knew how much work Valtira would be?). I knew he had the experience, work ethic, and personality to lead Valtira as the Director of Client Services.
His legacy at Valtira deeply underpins the way we work and the team we built. You can see his work within our very contracts and how we execute projects. He created our process, “The 4 Ds – Discovery, Design, Development and Deployment”, to guide customers to realize their dreams. He fought to protect our people from underestimating their impact and the value they bring to our projects. His legendary team-building skills created a highly functioning team who understood how to rely on one another.
Under his guidance, Valtira grew with these deep foundations and is set up to have a bright future.
Our time with Scott turned particularly fun when he and Nicole realized the impossible and sailed away from Bayfield for the adventure of a lifetime. We continued to have our weekly team meeting and started playing the “Where is Scott today?” game, or “Where did Scott not manage to sink today?”, or “What new part of a boat that none of us have ever heard of broke that Scott needs to fix, work-around, or ignore?” While Scott described that week’s adventure, we would use Google Maps to track his progress and wonder what it would be like to be there too. Later on we followed their progress on Facebook, loving the way their story unfolded.
I spoke with him several times over the summer, fighting through his diagnosis with his typical analytical and deeply emotional approach. Given our familiarity, I understood his story, where he was at, at the time, both medically and emotionally and what the future held. While we talked I always came away learning something new, much like I always had over the past 7 years. For those of you not lucky enough to know him, he left some inspiring words you can read here.
As he left Valtira’s offices two years ago I knew it would be awhile until we’d be face to face again, never suspecting it would be the last time I would see him. We made plans to go sailing but that will just have to wait.
Thank you, Scott. You will be deeply missed.
– Morgan Catlin and the Valtira team