About

Clifton Burt is a data wrangler who lives with his wife, PSU Professor Kate Bingaman-Burt, and their kiddo in Portland, Oregon.

His journey with computers began in 1982, age 7, at computer camp—green-screen CRT monitors, AppleWorks spreadsheets, and the kind of curiosity that never fades. He picked up SQL in the ’80s, got his first O’Reilly book on Perl in the ’90s, and never looked back. Since then: Python, R, Docker, and more.

He graduated from high school in Munich, attending the international school, then earned an undergraduate degree in finance. That led to a role as a clerk on the trading floor in Chicago—a sharp, fast environment that still informs his thinking.

In the 2000s, while Kate taught at Mississippi State, Clifton worked at an architectural outreach unit that functioned as a de facto planning office for the state, outside of Jackson. As a New Orleans native, he found this window into Mississippi's civic systems fascinating. When Katrina hit, he was four hours inland. The storm arrived as a Category 2, and he stood in the eye, surrounded by walls of wind and fallen trees. The Center’s work immediately shifted to post-hurricane response, and those intense months left a lasting impression.

Around that time, Clifton also began working with Auburn University’s Rural Studio in a design capacity—meaningful, grounded work in the built environment that he’s proud to have contributed to for nearly 10 years of rigorous building education.

In 2008 the family moved to Portland, Oregon. Clifton was a mentor in the graduate program in Applied Craft + Design at PNCA/OCAC during much of that time, while working on selected projects and always learning.

During the long stillness of COVID, he finally found time to focus at length—earning his data analyst certification, taking courses, experimenting on his homelab, and returning to long-standing interests in programming and data. At 50, with decades of meaningful work behind him, Clifton is now looking for a quiet role building data systems that matter—like those that support civic systems, housing, mass timber, agriculture, and other infrastructure. He's on track to earn his data engineer certification this autumn.

He wants to help good operations run even better and help data to light the way.

Contact him for microprojeccts, contracting, and consulting.