There was a moment in Dan Hansen’s life when he was a gang member. He carried a fake gun, hung out in the local pool hall, and had regular run-ins with law enforcement.
It was all part of his post-high school job at Hogan’s Alley, an FBI training facility near Quantico, Virginia. When that shift ended, Hansen would drive across town to his night job: manning the grill at McDonald’s.
Upon graduating from high school in Southern California in 1992, Hansen moved with his family to Virginia when his dad—a military helicopter pilot—was assigned to Headquarters Marine Corps. “I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do,” Hansen recalls. “I had a guitar, I had a girlfriend, I had sports, but I didn’t know what I wanted professionally.”
In the meantime, he had his gig at Hogan’s Alley, a ten-acre simulated city. Hansen—whose acting credentials up to that point only included a stake production of The Music Man and a road show in which he played mustard (yes, the condiment)—often found himself cast as a miscreant at Hogan’s Alley.
“You show up, and they give you a script that says something like ‘You are playing a gang member, hanging out in the pool hall. When the agents enter, verbally abuse them. If they press you for information, tell them that the suspect is hanging out in the rooming house across the street,’” he says.
Hansen found he wasn’t very good at verbally abusing the agents. “They would get a kick out of my tough-guy act; I didn’t have the vocabulary,” he admits. “Also, I wasn’t very good at pool.”
While an employee at Hogan’s Alley, Hansen was slammed to the floor a few times by agents-in-training. Now, as a managing director at Protiviti, Hansen helps organizations protect consumers from a different type of miscreant: cyber attackers.
“My current focus is working with companies—primarily in the tech space—that have caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, mainly around how they’re collecting, using, and protecting consumer data,” says Hansen, a 2000 information systems graduate. “When I’m not doing that, I’m helping clients think through privacy and cybersecurity risks so they can either prevent bad things from happening or detect them before they get out of hand.”
Fortunately, Hansen has never been body slammed in his nearly 25 years of professional consulting, although he acknowledges that his metaphorical career hits have been his best teachers. “Consulting can be painful. Things don’t always go as planned. However, I’ve learned you need those projects where you’re emotionally and physically spent to raise your pain tolerance,” he says. “I’ve had enough low lows to know that the pain is temporary and, depending on how you respond, ultimately contributes to your personal and professional growth. Sometimes you just need to actively lean into the refiner’s fire.”
Bandwidth
Before his time at Hogan’s Alley, 16-year-old Hansen spent a summer bagging groceries at the commissary on California’s El Toro Marine base, where his dad was stationed. The job didn’t offer a salary, but Hansen could earn tips. “Every day I would go home with a plastic bag full of dollar bills,” he says. Eventually, Hansen cashed in his tips at Guitar Center in Santa Ana, California, paying $535—all in single bills—for his first electric guitar.
Fast forward about 20 years. Hansen and his wife, Leigh, a classically trained pianist, were living in Utah when Hansen visited a Guitar Center again—this time with a credit card—and surprised Leigh with a drum kit for Christmas. Leigh had used a simulated drum kit while playing the video game Rock Band but had never played actual drums before. She says, “I remember thinking, I’m the mom of five little boys. How will I ever find the time to learn how to play the drums?”
Shortly after getting the drum set, Leigh started learning songs by ear, but after getting stuck on a few, she began taking lessons from a professional drummer in the ward. “Dan and I made a list of songs we wanted to learn and began practicing in the basement on weekends. We were having a great time.”
The two, who Hansen says “bonded over The Beatles and sappy ’70s love songs” when they were dating, had five songs in their repertoire when the second counselor in their ward’s bishopric invited them to play at a backyard party—in a tree house, nonetheless.
“I was terrified,” Leigh remembers. “But Dan said, ‘We should totally do it,’ so we picked some songs that we could polish and perform.” Hansen’s sister Laura, who played bass in a Los Angeles–based band, flew in to round out the ensemble. After the party, an informal group was born.
Throughout the years, friends and family members have rotated in and out of the band to play with the Hansens at various parties, ward functions, and family reunions. “It’s more of an aspirational band. We’re all musical, and we can generally put new songs together pretty quickly,” Hansen says. “I like to say we are the best husband-and-wife band—on our block.”
Their five boys occasionally step in as bandmates, although most of their concerts are in-house. The oldest, Jack, plays guitar and cello; Sam plays synthesizer, piano, and guitar; Charlie plays drums; Luke plays guitar; and the youngest, Henry, plays piano, bass, and percussion. “Music has turned out to be such a unifying thing in our family. We all have strong opinions about our favorite bands and genres,” Leigh says. “If you come by the house during dinner, you’ll likely hear us listening to music and talking about new bands.”
As for the band’s name, Frosty Knuckles, its origins can be traced to an online rap-name generator Hansen used while composing his family’s Christmas card. The website spit out “Frosty Knuckles” as a moniker for one of Hansen’s sons, but it felt like the name was meant for something greater, so Hansen adopted it for the band. “If you ask Frosty Knuckles if we’re ready to rock,” he says, “the answer is an emphatic ‘Yes!’ We are, in fact, ready.”
The Perfect Pitch
In one of his last classes before graduating from BYU, Hansen listened to a presentation on technology consulting given by Adam Cox, a representative from accounting powerhouse Arthur Andersen. Although Hansen already had a post-grad IT job lined up on the East Coast, something about the presentation just clicked.
“I found Adam in the Tanner Building atrium afterward and pitched myself. I had to move quickly because school would be over in a few weeks, and I would be moving east,” Hansen says. The firm expedited the normally monthslong interview process, and within weeks “I was sitting in Andersen in San Francisco, starting my career as a new consultant,” he says. “I always tell people I fell into this gig.”
Months later, Hansen stumbled upon a newspaper article about Enron’s financial woes during his commute on the Bay Area transit system. It looks like Enron’s in trouble, he thought. I wonder who its auditors are.
Turns out, it was Andersen. “It was heartbreaking to see the firm’s reputation being tarnished,” he says. “We thought we were going to pay a fine and things would be okay, but Andersen eventually lost its license to audit.” A few years later, the decision was overturned on appeal. “But Andersen was already gone. It was a bittersweet ruling,” Hansen says.
As Enron’s collapse reverberated, Robert Half, a professional staffing and recruitment firm, stepped in with a vision of acquiring Andersen’s internal audit and business-risk consulting practice. As a result, Protiviti was born in May 2002 with approximately 60 partners and 600 consultants—including Hansen. “Basically, one day we were Andersen and the next day we were Protiviti,” he says. “It took a bit for us and our clients to get used to the name; it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it points to some of our ideals, like integrity and productivity.”
Like his path to Protiviti, Hansen’s journey to BYU and to information systems was circuitous. He began his studies at Ricks College with his sights set on dentistry, his grandpa’s profession. Upon returning from a mission in Argentina and transferring to BYU, however, Hansen explored other options. “I took a semester of electrical engineering. It did not go well. I thought, These are not my people. I then tried computer science and thought, These are also not my people. I would have been a passable engineer but likely wouldn’t have thrived.”
But when Hansen learned about information systems, he was intrigued by the intersection of business and technology. He enrolled in prerequisite courses and was accepted into BYU Marriott. “It felt right and was a great fit,” he says. “The classes had a big influence on me. I loved the variety. I read books on accounting, finance, the Middle East peace process, networking, the theory of constraints, and database design. I even read Pride and Prejudice for my reading seminar with Professor Gary Hansen.”
Unsung Heroes
Although information systems was the right fit and Hansen landed in the right niche, it was still some time before he found his groove. “If you were to look at the class I started with at Andersen, there was a lot of talent and drive, and my sense was I was not exactly near the top,” he says. “If you were to place bets on who was going to rise to be a partner, I probably wouldn’t be in your top five. In fact, I wouldn’t have been in my own top five.”
But Hansen had potential. In 2004, two years after Protiviti’s formation, the West Coast managing director for technology consulting approached Hansen. “You’re from Utah, right?”
“Nope,” responded Hansen, who’d lived in Florida, Virginia, Washington, California, and Italy because of his dad’s military career. “I’m not from Utah.”
Undeterred, the managing director continued: “We want you to start our technology consulting practice in Salt Lake City.”
Living in Utah long-term had never been on Hansen’s radar, but the state became his family’s home for the next 11 years as he continued to grow the local practice, progressing from a senior consultant to a director. “We hired a great team early on—starting with two information system grads from BYU—and were off and running,” he says.
It was a great opportunity in multiple ways. “I was given the chance to lead a practice and focus more on project management and business development,” he says. “I found I was actually pretty good at putting teams together and understanding clients’ needs.”
When Protiviti came back to Hansen with an offer to return to California in 2015, he resisted. “I was happy in Utah. We had bought my great-grandfather’s house that he had built in 1924 and had just put a lot of time and money into remodeling it,” he says. Protiviti persisted and presented Hansen with an offer to run the Bay Area’s security and privacy practice, a path to becoming a managing director. “Finally, we said yes,” he recalls. “We came back to California with high hopes—and, initially, it wasn’t great.”
Not only were the social adjustments hard on his family as they settled in Moraga, California, but Hansen’s first six months were also drained by a four-hour roundtrip commute to a demanding client in the South Bay. “It was one of those times when I thought, We’ve made a big mistake.”
But eventually, Hansen and his family found their rhythm—the work in the South Bay was successfully completed, and the constant commuting eased up. That experience, however, confirmed the perspective Hansen had been preaching to his teams for years. “Everybody needs a trying project that stretches you,” he says. “Once you come out the other end, your capacity to deal with challenging circumstances increases.”
Hansen’s hard work paid off, and he became a managing director in Protiviti’s Security & Privacy practice in January 2017. Whether clients want help implementing security tools, complying with new privacy legislation, managing risks specific to AI, or even hacking into their own organizations, “we figure out how to do that for them,” Hansen says. “It’s a great place to play, and ironically, I now work closely with engineers and computer scientists who I didn’t think were ‘my people.’ Our teams need the variety of skills and perspectives to solve our clients’ problems.”
Consultants may well be the unsung heroes of the business world, Hansen suggests. Consulting requires a unique combination of skills, including technical writing, project management, public speaking, the ability to quickly digest large amounts of information, critical thinking, active listening, and constant learning. “I’ve always loved the variety,” Hansen continues. “Different companies, different projects, different challenges, different people. What’s not to like?”
Well-Versed
The professional variety is perfect for Hansen, whose personal interests are equally diverse. “Curiosity has been an asset. I don’t think I’ve been bored since I was five,” he says. “I’m interested in so many things. I’m up for discussing Olympic weightlifting, the Tour de France, freestyle wrestling, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I got into linguistics for a while. I’m interested in politics, the Middle East, and history, and I have been following the development of AI. I’m also a big Shakespeare enthusiast, and I will talk your ear off about music, especially music from the ’80s and ’90s.”
Another one of his favorite topics is church culture. “There are our core beliefs, but there’s this other culture built around the religion itself that adds depth and variety to what we do. We really are peculiar,” he says. “It’s very distinctive, and it fascinates me.”
On his short list of cultural touchpoints: road shows (“They need to come back.”), filmstrips, the Osmonds (“Do people remember Donny and Marie had a prime-time variety show?”), green Jell-O, My Turn on Earth, funeral potatoes, unusually large sodas, Studio C, church ball, food storage, and—of course—BYU sports. “Some of it is tongue in cheek, but if you name it, I’m likely enthused about it,” he says.
Despite his curiosity, Hansen insists he’s a homebody—that is, when you can catch him at home. The past summer took him to London (with his sisters for a Liam Gallagher concert), to Utah (once when his son Jack got married, another visit for family reunions plus the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and various business visits), and to Spain and Italy for a COVID-postponed senior trip with his son Sam. Hansen’s recent work travels include New York City; Boston; Chicago; Austin, Texas; Los Angeles; and Charlotte, North Carolina.
No matter where he is, “Dan can shift into this social butterfly persona,” Leigh says. “When I went with him to his first work event in Salt Lake City, I was blown away; he was the whole entertainment. I remember thinking, Wow, is he on all the time at work? He’s entertaining everyone, and he’s really good at it.”
Hansen’s warm disposition and quick wit make it easy to sing his praises. “His ability to relate with people is his superpower,” Leigh says. “Dan says he knows a little bit about everything, but really, he knows a lot about everything. He’s a trivia king, and that’s one reason he can connect with anyone at any level. He just puts people at ease.”
Although Hansen was hired to agitate agents at Hogan’s Alley all those years ago, that act couldn’t be more out of character. “Dan has an ability to disarm anger, and he likes everyone he meets. He rarely gets offended or holds a grudge; it’s just not in his nature,” Leigh says. “He found exactly the right job. It’s like his role at Protiviti was made for him.”
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Written by Emily Edmonds
Photography by Bradley Slade
