From an early age, I was a kid who wanted to live life from a thousand and one places, always driven by a need to know more. I would deconstruct things and put them back together — never in one piece, but always slightly different. I learned pretty early on that you could learn a lot from a book, but even more from trying things yourself. It’s why I electrocuted myself only once but learned that while voltage is balanced in a parallel circuit, it’s the current that will kick your ass when you cross a wire. I read that first part in a book and never made that mistake again.
Writer, carpenter, engineer, artist, back-channel diplomat. The list of things I wanted to be when I grew up was long. In between building what seemed to be an aimless career and occasionally paying rent, I spent the better part of my twenties and early thirties traveling the world, asking questions, observing, talking with people completely unlike me.
That instinct turned into twenty-five years of work. As a senior leader inside some of the biggest brand, marketing, and advertising agencies in the world. Leading my own agencies. As a mentor at Harvard Innovation Lab, MassChallenge, TechStars, other startup incubators. Working across industries — healthcare, consumer, finance, technology — helping companies explain why their work matters and to create a brand that’s found its voice. The work was different every time. The question underneath it was always the same. And it was rarely the one that was asked.
It took a few years to realize I’d been doing this work my whole life. The curiosity. The questions. The need to understand what drives people. You spend enough time in rooms where you don’t speak the language, you learn to read them instead. That’s still the job. The medium changed. The instinct didn’t.
The truth is: I love my work, but my life outside of it is most important. I’m married to the love of my life, Kristen, with whom we raise two awesomely curious boys, a noble bird dog, and live in an old farmhouse outside of Boston. As you can imagine, I have no shortage of hobbies or interests.