As a polymath and entrepreneur, I've had the delight of learning a bit about every area of business and humanity in a wide variety of contexts. While I'm a topic expert in marketing and operations, my skill set doesn't end there.

While I'm not a purebred number cruncher and won't ever apply to be a CFO, I've done my fair share of work in financial department.

The HR role always has two sides in my mind: compliance and human optimization. I tend towards the optimization side, though I also understand and have worked with the basics of HR law and practice.

Logistics is a game for me, and seeing daily operations is enthralling as we're building and refining the process. Once we've reached stability, I tend to hand off the day-to-day to another team member with whom I can collaborate on the mundane tasks.

Being a lawyer or psychologist are my alternate career choices. While far from a legal expert in any topic, I have a functional understanding of most areas of law.

A born nerd with an understanding of practical business use cases, I have successfully created and maintained the entire tech stack for businesses in most industries with an eye towards cybersecurity. While not a network or database engineer, I am able to understand and navigate the world without getting lost too often.

Working with academic and industry research teams to commercialize technologies was a large part of my role at the SBDC, giving me the ability to bridge the gap between a ISO 2 cleanroom and boardroom.

My polyglot predisposition allows me to quickly understand and build the business case for most technologies.

Freshman year of high school, I started competitive academic debate and public speaking and haven't stopped since. With a quirky form of charisma, I'm strongest at semi-improptu presentations, communicating nearly any idea to a wide variety of audiences.

I've emceed many events, run and pitched business competitions and accelerators, and been grilled by my fair share of investors.

Additionally, I've been involved in many rounds of pitch preparation with my clients, often leading to some big bucks.

My neuro divergent brain sees the threads in the information and intuitively understands information architecture and how different groups want to engage with information.

That has made me the go-to person to organize complex information into knowledge bases such as internal wikis, user guides, project plans, training courses, etc.

Meetings require agendas and notes. Projects require plans, and the information in a business should be documented to reduce the number of times we have to relearn it.

Growing to have a visceral understanding of the target market's mindset, values, and perceptions. Navigating the difference between felt, expressed, and actual leads and how that influences the communication strategy of inbound sales and outbound marketing.

After building 100+ websites, I’ve built a solid understanding of the mindsets of the target market users, their preferred communication methods, and how that translates to website architecture, visual design, and user experiences focused functionalities. User experiences focused.

Planning, creating ad copy, designing the visual creative, and then tweaking based on ongoing conversion tracking and lead attribution data have been nearly a daily habit for a decade.

I’ve run paid campaigns on the radio, in newspapers and magazine, and on cable TV.

Digital Campaigns On

Google's mission is to organize the information of the world, and I have considered adopting that as my own mission statement. Since my teenage years, I have been using nearly every Google product to help my business and my clients grow.

Strategy, storyboarding, pre-production, day of production, and post-production of nearly all forms of visual content.

Like any good Gen Z-er, I've grown up on social media and have used most platforms for some form of commercial activity. Social media strategy, content planning and creation, and ongoing community management have all been solid items in my marketing toolbox for some time.

I've been hired to run campaigns on these platforms:

B2B, B2C, B2G, and most other combinations of B2_ I've done in my career. I see sales as an ongoing human-to-human relationship-building and maintaining process.

With 80% of sales based on word-of-mouth engagement, I believe our customers are our greatest marketing tools. Giving them an exceptional experience and then continuing the relationship building post-purchase is mission-critical to the success of the business.

We make zero movement towards our vision without humans. Groups of humans build business. Rarely does one human do it solo, and humans are differentiated, constantly changing, and multifaceted.

A team member who is thriving in all areas of their life is going to be the most effective person in the workplace, so I do what I can to support a well-rounded life.

Orchestrating a team is often a challenge that I've overcome with full-time onsite staff in a range of departments and roles. I've also built effective remote work and hybrid teams, as well as juggled and managed gig workers. Most days, you'll find me working with team members in all of these roles.

Keeping the process moving towards the vision by making the hard calls with decision-making, walking through crisis management, resolving conflicts, and finding the middle path when everyone else is at odds or stuck.

Out of all of our options, which ones are we going to pick, and how do they all fit together across the organization while shifting over time and constantly managing risk?

Regardless of the area of business, I have a strategic thinking and planning mindset. Whether it is overall strategy, market strategy, investor strategy, etc. I add value and often lead this process.

Pro: I can teach nearly any topic with minimal preparation in an engaging manner. I've taught 100+ workshops and tend towards an engaging mentorship style, using strong speaking to facilitate more than to bestow knowledge. Public speaking has been in my blood for years, so stage fright isn't much of an issue.

Con: Teaching to the lowest common denominator or teaching the same content repeatedly doesn't connect with me. I must be challenged and can't dumb it down too far below my current skill set.

Pro: Creativity and ideation are synonymous in my mind. I can often connect with a higher artistic sense and find the vibe that connects with the project in most areas of creative expression.

Con: Visually expressing my design sense doesn't come naturally to me. I don't have an artistic medium other than spoken words that I'm strong in.

Pro: Curiosity and a love of adventure have driven me to become a problem-solving, critical-thinking individual who is highly adaptable and flexible. I hold myself responsible and have a natural inclination towards optimism and empathy.

Con: Money is no longer a strong enough motivator to get me to do work that I see as meaningless or not serving a greater purpose.

Pro: As a highly self-aware, assertive, and confident person, I seek to balance all perspectives in a way that allows me to maintain my emotional regulation.

Con: I assume people are self aware as I am and when that’s not true I struggle.

Liberal View: For the long-term health of an organization, diversity in perspective is powerful. Equity of power comes from mutual respect. Inclusion of all equality is a self-evident value, but a a bit of extra effort to account for the historically disenfranchised and disrespected is wise.

Conservative view: Meritocracy does have a place in the work environment. A person’s race or gender shouldn't be a major deciding factor in nearly any decision.

It’s been a few years since I used these heavily.

My ability to mask my inner thoughts is limited. My poker face skills are strong when I'm bluffing, but when there's some emotion behind it, like disgust, it bleeds through. This is a well-documented manifestation of Autism.

I can be a starter or I can be a finisher but I can’t be both without a lot of slogging.

Much of the corporate, educational, social, and political infrastructures that are the norm in Western culture, I believe, are outdated and in need of an overhaul. I can be scathing in my comments and have a bit too much rage at the system. When I should keep my mouth shut and just leave things be, I speak up and poke fun. There are ways to express deep disagreement without so much snark.

Both my university degree and actual experience in business have given me a strong understanding of financial management and reporting. Long-term and complex financial projections are still a challenge for me, especially when differential models and Excel guru-level skills are required.

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