I've lived all over the world. I've gone to brilliant schools and learned wonderful, life-changing things. I've worked at magical places with amazing people who have mentored me and taught me to do what I could never have dreamed of doing. I've had the honor of leading and mentoring creatives who've gone on to do world-changing things. I've brought incredible ideas to life for iconic brands. I've helped people tell their stories in powerful ways that connect and provoke action. I've been able to do work that brings beauty and joy into the world. I met a brilliant woman and married 'up' and together we made an awesome child.
After boarding school in the UK (any Latin homeys out there?), and a short stint in the Middle East, I started my professional life at U.C. Berkeley, where I studied Political Economics with an eye to a career in Constitutional Law. But after taking a side gig translating clips from Arabic and French into English for an independent documentary film, I fell in love with storytelling, photography, and filmmaking, and that whole Law School thing fell by the way-side.
After a couple of years learning the craft working on independent films and small shops in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had the incredible fortune of spending 7 amazing years at George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic (basically being paid to go to the world's greatest film school.)
Ultimately, I left ILM to work as a freelance commercial director, visual effects supervisor, and creative director, but as the budgets in commercials began to implode, I began a shift to the more B2B side of filmmaking, creating films, presentations, and writing scripts for high-budget Enterprise events. I began to get more and more involved in the brand strategy side of things and when I was offered a role on the agency side of things I jumped at it.
After 8 years agency-side, a chance introduction led me to Freeman where I was offered the opportunity to work for one of my design idols, Bruce Mau, on optimizing the Freeman ecosystem, helping drive new models of design-led thinking across every vertical of the business, and delivering frictionless, innovative and unique experiences to our clients and colleagues.
Eventually, I had the honor and privilege of being on Freeman's executive team, leading the Design and Creative organization at Freeman, a 400-person team of designers, creatives, technicians, engineers, and administrators, but with that role, came the frustrating realization that managing a function of that size had taken me pretty far from 'the work'.
Which brings me to today, where I'm back out in the world, closer to 'the work' and building cool shit every day.