MY STORY & RESUME
I grew up in New Haven, CT, which you might know as a crime-ridden pitstop between NYC and Boston with plausibly good pizza, but I know as the Greatest Small City in America. When I was young I loved exploring diverse sub-cultures: I learned Tai-Chi with Taiwanese expats in New York’s Chinatown, played guitar with a straight-edge punk band, and studied Talmud at a local rabbinical academy.
A fascination with people and cultures set me on the way to earning a Ph.D. in European cultural history. I became a professional detective and storyteller: for nearly a decade, I poked around the world’s dustiest archives, reading letters, diaries, business records, and legal files, looking for patterns and piecing together a narrative about how individual behaviors coalesce to create large-scale cultural change.
It was a cool gig. I got to see the world. I lived three years abroad in 6 countries and learned 4 languages along the way. I wrote a book-length study on modern culture and identity in Germany. I met some of the most intelligent people I’ll ever know and made life-long friends. I’d like to think it made me the person I am today.
The Ivory Tower, it turns out, wasn’t a life-long fit. I wanted to see my ideas in action in the real world. To collaborate with creative people making cool things. I traded Endnote for Keynote and haven’t looked back.
I’m still a detective, a storyteller, and a cultural snoop. After working at a couple of great advertising and branding agencies, I decided to go out on my own as an independent freelancer. It’s the future of our economy, and I’m getting out in front of things. It’s wondrous, actually.