The longer version

I'm a craftsman, working at the intersection of design and technology. These days I do that at the scale of teams and platforms — the tools ~70,000 frontline employees rely on every day.

Most of what I build now is teams, and the systems around them. Leading well is rarely about reporting lines. It's about structure and incentives — setting things up so the right work is the work people reach for. That comes from a long interest in psychology and behavioral economics, and it's the same instinct that shapes how I work with AI: deciding what belongs in a context window versus a separate agent is really a question of attention and bias.

Lately that means building a digital team to augment our designers — a process, specialized agents, and skills that carry my standard into every build. The standard hasn't moved: quality from the interface to the code, regardless of whose hands it passes through. And on nights and weekends I still open my own files, with my own hands. Some habits you keep on purpose.

How I got here

I didn't start in management. I started by making things.

In 2002, I founded Fusion Media Interactive, a 3D animation and interactive media studio. For six years we built dimensional assets, motion graphics, and interactive experiences for agencies and brands before I sold the company to EffectiveUI.

After several years there, I stepped away briefly to explore retail experience design at Nexus, then returned to EffectiveUI on my own as an individual contributor. Deliberately back at the workbench, I unofficially led our prototyping practice — closing the gap between design and engineering with disposable code and rapid testbeds. The white papers and builds from that era did the work a job application usually does.

In 2015, I joined Spectrum as Director of Design Technology to formally build out an R&D practice. Over that team's run, we shipped 580+ prototypes — exploring voice remotes, eye-tracking, and enterprise toolchains. That work eventually became the foundation for Kite, a design system I scaled across five organizations and 40+ teams.

Managing at that scale taught me that the hardest problems aren't technical. They're organizational. You don't scale craft by micromanaging files; you scale it by building systems, codifying standards, and giving people the tools to meet them.

Outside the office

I learn new technology the same way I always have: by building real things with it.

When I wanted to push the boundaries of AI workflows, I didn't read theory — I built The Neighborhood Lab, a live civic tool parsing county tax assessor data across 157,557 properties for a local campaign. Building this portfolio site from scratch as a token-driven design system came from that same instinct.

That community thread runs through everything I do. I co-founded the Denver chapter of CreativeMornings, organizing events and running photography for the community. I also built and maintain the real-time auction platform for Adaptive Spirit, the telecom industry's fundraiser supporting the U.S. Paralympic Ski and Snowboard team.

Away from the keyboard, I'm usually rock climbing, traveling with a camera, or working in my studio.