That's not an accident, it's just how I collaborate.

 

My first role on stage was Tom Sawyer. In Tom Sawyer. Fourth grade.

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I was on stage before I knew what a career was. I grew up in Minnesota, born to two very young parents who taught me that the way through was to be impossible to ignore (my nickname was Hollywood).

 

When people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was always rich and famous. Not because I was delusional. Because I knew, early, that I wanted to matter.

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That instinct took me places I didn't expect.

A vocal performance scholarship.

A move to western South Dakota for a boy who turned out to be the wrong one.

A decade as a music and technical director at a church, where I quietly rebuilt four completely distinct services from the ground up. I led worship at the largest Methodist church on Earth and nearly pivoted my whole life toward that.

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I didn't.

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Instead, I walked into a registrar's office and asked her to find me the fastest way to a diploma. I'd put too much work into it to walk away and I wanted to be the first in my family to do it. I took two graphic design classes and fell completely in love. I made the dean's list for the first time in my life and did every semester after that.

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Turns out I'd been a designer the whole time.

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From there, I built a career that kept asking more of me — and I kept saying yes. Junior designer at an agency for places like Häagen-Dazs Shops, Ecolab, Cargill, and CH Robinson. Then Abbott, one of three presentation specialists across a hundred thousand employees, and somehow the one everyone found anyway. Then Starkey, where I got to rebuild how a global company thought about its biggest moments. Then Art Director.

 

I've directed events for rooms of five thousand people and livestreams that reached a hundred thousand more. I've designed for CEOs and division presidents and audiences that had no patience for anything that didn't land.

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The performer is still in there. He just figured out that the stage and the conference room ask for the same thing — read the room, earn the attention, make it matter. I bring energy to rooms that other designers don't. Not because I try to. Because I can't help it.

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Outside of work, I'm a new dad to my daughter, Manhattan, who has opinions — specifically about bedtime windows, Sara Bareilles, and whether you've been properly vetted. I'm also a Dungeon Master running a homebrew world I've been building for years, which is either a creative outlet or a second job depending on the week.

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If any of this sounds like someone you'd like on your team — or just someone you'd like to grab coffee with — I'd love to hear from you.