My mentor used to say “Creativity speaks Italian, but business speaks English. We will never understand each other.”

I always wondered why one of us didn’t just learn the language of the other and translate. So, after winning a Cannes Lion in 2015, I set my sights on business school. A student of VCU’s Brandcenter, I studied creativity at the “Harvard of advertising schools.” Then, in 2019, I stepped away from agency life to attend the “Stanford of business schools”—quite literally—Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

My real education, though, wasn’t in the classroom. I learned marketing and creativity during my 5 years at the celebrated Crispin Porter + Bogusky (2010’s ad agency of the decade), and business in co-founding an AI startup based on our own research at Stanford—launching an AI application to help professionals working remotely in enterprise, telemedicine, and education “read the virtual room” using behavioral intelligence). That startup was acquired last month (announcement here).

In other efforts, I’m developing a documentary TV series that examines through eight of my own innovations how tech—used in new and better ways—could allow us to connect in deep and meaningful ways that were impossible to previous generations. (Are you from Netflix? Let’s talk.)

I developed a platform for saving disappearing and dying European villages through genealogy-based tourism using data and social media. That work is here. If you’re a politician in Europe interested in adding your city to the project, please use the contact page.

I’ve done creative, marketing, and strategic work (including a World Series and Super Bowl ad) for some of the biggest brands, best agencies, and a unicorn startup.

I’m passionate about using creative problem-solving to fix societal problems. In 2005, I won a Cannes Lion at the International Festival for Creativity for my project “War at Home.” I flew one of the world’s most famous war photographers back from Iraq and Afghanistan to document the military’s deadliest battlefields—the bedrooms, living rooms and garages where 22 of our veterans lose their life to suicide each day.

Previously, I was part of one chapter of Domino’s transition into a tech company. I helped JetSmarter (“Uber for private jets”—a brand for the 0.1%er) find its heart with “Charter Hope”—letting members donate their unused flight time to fly immunocompromised newborns home for the first time. And I helped turn Under Armour into a basketball brand. My work has appeared in and been written about by the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Time, the BBC and others.

See the work.