About
I’ve always been curious about people.
I grew up on a sheep farm in Maine. At 19, I went to Kenya to study Swahili. My early career took me into international business and technology, including work with a Taiwanese shipyard.
I loved being dropped into unfamiliar places and figuring out how people with different languages, assumptions and ways of seeing the world could understand one another and work together.
And sometimes, the world came home with me.
Over time, that curiosity turned inward.
I became less interested in what makes cultures different and more interested in what makes people human. Why we resist change. What creates trust. Why smart people get stuck. What helps us take a risk, change our minds or imagine something different.
That exploration has changed the way I work. I pay attention to what people say and what sits underneath it. I’m interested in the problem behind the problem. And I know that even the smartest strategy goes nowhere if the humans involved can’t move with it.
Understanding people has become one of the most important tools I bring to solving problems.
And I like turning that understanding into something real. A strategy. A prototype. A program. An experience. Something people can react to, use and make better.
Maybe that’s why I’ve spent so much of my life making things.
Joy by Design
That same curiosity lives outside my professional work. Joy by Design is a creative project and small community I created for people who are also curious about the messy, fascinating business of being human.
It’s where I write, experiment and bring people together to explore questions about emotion, relationships, change and how we make sense of our lives.
And inevitably, what I learn there makes my professional work stronger. Whether it’s a customer, a client, or an internal stakeholder – humans are always at the center of change.