Since joining the Tamarack team in 2017, Chad Carlson has been an instrumental part of the company’s sustained growth. An advocate for the equipment finance industry, he is an active member of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association and earned his Certified Lease & Finance Professional designation in 2019. But as you’ll learn this month, there is so much more to Chad outside the office. He is a dedicated husband, father and suffering Minnesota sports fan.
What is your role at Tamarack?
As the director of professional services, I work with Norma Arias to lead the professional services (PS) team and am responsible for the P&L of the PS team. My focus is on managing the team’s resources, which includes hiring and growing the team, ensuring project delivery for our clients and personal growth development of our team members, developing new services to offer our clients, working with our clients to understand their needs and aligning our team to help.
What is your favorite thing about working at Tamarack?
By far my favorite thing about working here is the people. We have put together such a fantastic team who are all great to work with. They are passionate, knowledgeable and love what they do. It is a joy to get to know each of them personally and to work side by side to help clients solve problems.
What does life look like for you outside of Tamarack?
I am blessed to have the most amazing wife Ann, and our family would fall apart without her. We were high school sweethearts and got married after college. We will be celebrating our 20th anniversary this fall with a Caribbean cruise to Bermuda and the Bahamas -- our first real vacation alone without the kids.
We have four children: Allision (15), Nathan (13), Chloe (11), and Owen (6). This year we also celebrated a new phase in our family as Owen started kindergarten. We have also been teaching Allision to drive. She recently got her driver’s permit and it’s been very exciting so far -- especially during this year’s Minnesota winter!
We love spending time with them playing board games, watching movies, playing and coaching them in sports. During the warmer months, we are always playing some sort of sports outside, whether it is tossing the football or playing catch in the yard, basketball in the driveway, or tennis and pickleball at a court. During the winter, all the kids are in basketball so there is usually a game or practice. As my kids have gotten older and more involved, my wife and I have turned to watching, cheering and coaching.
Our family also loves doing escape rooms. All my kids enjoyed doing escape room games on an iPad, and they got very excited when we turned it into a real-life experience. We have done around 10 as a family and recently completed one where we turned in one of the top-five fastest times for the challenge.
What are some of your favorite vacation memories?
This last year, we were able to go on two family trips. One was a trip to escape the end of winter to St. Augustine, Florida. We enjoyed seeing all the history that area provided and swimming in the ocean. The kids also really liked a quick trip this summer to Branson, Missouri. We were able to get outside and see the Ozark Mountains. Our favorite activities were experiencing the canopy and zip line, seeing the amazing scenery and exploring a cave 100 feet underground.
Where do you call home?
Our family lives in the small town of Zimmerman, north of the Twin Cities. My wife and I both grew up in the area, and it is great that a lot of our family are close and live nearby as well - including both of sets of grandparents. We like the small-town feel and living a little out in the country where we can have a big yard for the kids to explore.
What is your favorite season?
My favorite season is fall. During winter (especially this one with all the snow), I sometimes wonder why I continue to live in Minnesota. Then I realize that without having winter we wouldn’t be able to enjoy Minnesota autumn. There is something about just smelling the autumn air, seeing all the trees change color, the nice cool temperatures when you are outside, and also the start of the football season!
What else are you passionate about?
In addition to family and church, I love watching and cheering for our Minnesota
sports teams. I am fan of all of them with my favorites being the Vikings and Timberwolves. Each year, we have had a lot of heartbreaks in our quest for a championship, but each year I seem to always recover from the previous year’s heartbreak and have renewed optimism that this is our year! It has been fun to see this passion start to show up in my kids as well.