about me

Background

I was born in Biarritz, France (born there because my mom was 9 months pregnant and vacationing) and raised in Berlin, Germany by a single American mother, who worked for the U.S. Military. I grew up speaking German and English. I loved riding my skateboard and bike around Berlin but also played soccer and basketball.

When I was 19, I moved to the Santa Fe, New Mexico with my Mom and brother. None of us had ever lived there before but my mother liked New Mexico for its natural beauty and art scene. 2 years later I moved to Las Vegas to attend UNLV and lived there for 18 years before moving to San Francisco.

I’m married to my wonderful wife, Lianna, and we’re constantly planning our next travels and adventures together. We have two children that are great little teachers of life.

Personal Motivation, Philosophy Ramble

I’m a self-starter, somebody that’s better without a strict script or well-defined job description. I prefer immersing myself into my role and discovering areas to improve, exploring new opportunities and reinforcing already established strengths. Team spirit and cohesion is one of the things I value the most and there’s no better feeling than working within a team and looking around your work environment and seeing that mutual trust and admiration. Years of playing soccer and basketball have taught me the amazing synergies that can happen when a team is on the same wave length.

I believe you can learn from every experience and therefore I expose myself to as many different experiences as possible. I take smart short-cuts not so I can do less, but so I can do more. I believe in being genuine and acting with integrity and those are the characteristics I look for in friends as well as coworkers. I’m constantly dreaming and imagining but solidly grounded with how much effort it takes to realize those dreams. While my track record reflects much of these values, I’m humbled daily by what I don’t know and the mistakes I’ve made learning what I do know.

Career Highlights

• Zappos - 2005-2012
  • Headed up and started front-end team from 0-14
  • Head of UX (UX, IA, Design, Front-End) 40 person team
  • Head of Mobile (mobile web, iPhone, Android) small cross functional team grew to 500MM in revenue
• Co-founder - Fairejour 2013-2015
  • Ethically made clothing marketplace and direct to consumer dress manufacturing
  • Bootstrapped to 170k annual revenues before shutting down
• Place.xyz Jan-Feb 2016 - VP of Engineering (last 30 days of 20MM startup)
• Lob Head of Engineering - Physical Mail API SAAS
• Firesqueak (consulting company) highlights:
  • Revolve 5 year contract working with UX/Front-end teams (software engineering, architecture, eng org process, progression plans)
  • Allbirds 2016-2018 - sole tech team (web development, API integrations)

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