About

When I was very young, my aunt would improvise stories on the fly for my siblings and me. I was entranced. By second grade I’d written my first “book,” a children’s short story called Timmy: the Clock Who Couldn’t Tell Time. I read voraciously for years after that—fiction and nonfiction, encyclopedias, newspapers, National Geographic—anything that felt like a doorway into another world.

Story still feels like the deepest way I know to connect: with other people, with the world, and with myself.

I’m also a systems person. I like turning messy ideas into something you can actually use: a plan, a page, a routine, a meal, a game… a story. I live in Utah with my partner and three kids, and a lot of my life right now revolves around building a home that feels steady, curious, and kind.

I’ve spent a long time working at the intersection of strategy, design, and execution. But this site is not my professional portfolio. This is my corner of the internet for the human side of the work: what I’m learning, what I’m making, and what I’m practicing.

A few themes I keep coming back to

• Curiosity over certainty. I learn best by testing small ideas and paying attention.
• Craft and iteration. Version 1 is allowed to be rough.
• Clarity and calm. The right system should reduce friction, not add to it.
• Kindness and repair. Relationships matter more than being right.
• Good constraints. Limits make creativity possible.

How I think

For a while in my teens and early young-adult years, I pulled away from emotions and from story. In the gap, I dove headfirst into strategy, planning, and design.

Now I think of those as different angles of the same thing.

Strategy is figuring out what the story is, and shaping the narrative in a way that helps other people understand it. I tend to do well at stepping back and seeing the big picture, but I’ve also learned to keep my head in the game on the ground.

And it’s not all opinion. Data is part of the story, too. I’ve spent plenty of time compiling and studying reports, coding qualitative survey responses, and looking for patterns in what customers say and do.

Planning is the first step of executing a strategy: organizing the plan (a story) you then get to play out (not unlike planning a Dungeons & Dragons campaign...). Oddly enough, I’m good at organizing because of my ADHD.

My brain does better with external structure. Executive function is a real challenge for me, which means habits and “just do it” motivation don’t reliably show up on schedule. Over time—through therapy, mindfulness, and lots of iteration—I’ve learned to build external systems that help me make decisions, keep moving, and actually finish things.

Design (and art in general) is storytelling too. Color and shape—or words, sound, and smell—shape meaning. Design can carry the narrative on its own, and it can amplify narrative when paired with strategy and writing.

What I’m building these days

• A personal operating system in Notion that helps me juggle parenting, projects, and the everyday stuff.
• Tabletop game ideas and worldbuilding projects that start as scribbles and gradually become playable prototypes and readable stories. (Dungeons & Dragons—and Brandon Sanderson— helped me fall back in love with story)
• A writing habit that is less about perfection and more about telling the truth with care and more consistency.
• A growing set of “food experiments,” where I research, prototype, and iterate recipes until they become easy and repeatable.

Elsewhere

I also run Genius Power & Magic, where I do web strategy and related work. That site (and LinkedIn) is the professional hub. This one stays personal.