About Me

I've been a journalist professionally since October 31, 2005.

At 22, I started working at a daily newspaper in a hardscrabble Midwestern city, wearing holes in my budget dress shoes. It sounds corny but I had the wet socks to prove it. I won a regional award for a story about some artifacts found in a locker at the local high school. Still, I am most proud to have aggressively reported on the local bodies of government without favor or fear of angering the power-brokers there. That was 2005-2008.

I spent the next seven years working at three alternative weeklies in St. Louis, Denver, and New York. It was a time of slideshows, concert reviews, political blogging, and emerging digital media empires. That was 2008-2015.

The next six years saw me help shepherd a media startup from an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to offices on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Quite the journey. I helped scale the traffic but also shaped the editorial vision and priorities, winning recognition and learning first-hand about the challenges and rewards of helping lead a new media venture.

All of my experiences during this journey gave me an even wider view of the importance of economically sustainable journalism. I also saw the value of transparency with readers and among managers.

Finally, knowing, building, and retaining an audience has been one of the most valuable skills I've developed. This relationship may also be the reason many of us get into journalism — to communicate with your community about the issues that matter or should matter to them.

As I write this, I'm 39. I've had a lot of experience in digital media over a relatively short amount of time.

I currently work at Asana as a blog editor, tasked with creating brand journalism for the work management platform.

I was born and raised in Illinois, educated in St. Louis, and am raising a baby girl with my wife in Brooklyn, New York.