Hi there!
In over three decades of leadership as a systems engineer and product manager, I have helped small and large businesses leverage the power of web services to provide global customers with actionable data through a smooth user-focused experience.
Based just outside of New York City, I have collaborated with forward-thinking organizations across Europe and around the Asia-Pacific region.
As a technologist, I started my career with UUNET, bringing businesses onto the Internet during the explosive global growth of connectivity in the late 1990s. Then I expanded the reach of one of the earliest content distribution networks at Into Networks, streaming software over broadband in 2001. A few years later I shifted from sending bits around the world to storing them securely on regulatory-compliant RAID arrays at Permabit.
Leaning into a deep interest in world travel, I spent the better part of 12 years in the travel industry, helping ITA Software launch air shopping websites for airlines in 2008 and building a travel app marketplace for Travelport in 2014. I led teams in Travel API hackathons in 2012 and 2015, for Travelport and Jet Messaging Technologies, as well as spearheading a 2011 entry to a cleantech accelerator program for GELI, an energy startup purchased by Qcells.
I returned to my Internet roots in 2018, helping OpenFiber build out a Fiber-to-the-Home network for the town of Atherton, California, before moving on to the SANS Institute where I enabled on-demand 3rd party licensing, cloud resource provisioning, and automated evaluations for live and online cybersecurity students.
As a writer and photographer, I have been published in National Geographic Traveler and US Airways magazines, and won a Solas Award for travel writing. I’ve had my photography included in multiple books, and I was the managing editor for Vagabonding, a collaborative blog dedicated to long term travel.
As a traveler and adventurer, I’ve visited 22 countries on 5 continents, including an epic 3-month trip throughout Southeast Asia, witnessed a total solar eclipse from a small island in the East China Sea, been to Burning Man 8 times, seen the sunrise in the Sahara, and dived among the coral reefs of Fiji and through the cenotes of the Yucatan.
As a humanitarian, I have bicycled in support of AIDS patients, shoveled cement from schools in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, and worked with NetHope to train over 70 professionals from global NGOs in basic cybersecurity practices.
Most recently, I’ve been focused on the human side of AI, prototyping tools that don’t replace thinking, but help sharpen it. At SenseHuman, I’ve been designing narrative-based systems that train skills like critical thinking, emotional clarity, and discernment, in response to the growing concern of over-dependency on Generative AI as a default decision-maker. It’s part of an ongoing inquiry: how do we build digital experiences that empower human agency, rather than erode it?
Designing human-first systems that leverage AI as a partner rather than as a cognitive replacement also led me to develop RoleFinder. The tech job market has grown harder to navigate, and the tools available to job seekers haven’t kept up. I wanted to give the community something more targeted, a tool that watches the companies you actually care about, evaluates every new role against your specific background, and surfaces the best matches daily, so the search works for you rather than the other way around. I’ve open-sourced it and offer a managed version through LaunchBridge, my AI consultancy, a project that reflects how I’ve always worked best, with one foot in the architecture and the other in the product.
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