journal / personal history and creative practice

I grew up at West Point, then went to FIT to pursue art.

I grew up around the world as a third-culture kid, including years living inside West Point. Passing through its gate guards was part of everyday life. Later, I went to New York to study at FIT and pursue the creative side I had always carried. I have visited more than 120 countries. These are not incompatible parts of my life; moving between them shaped how I work.

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West Point was part of my everyday world

I lived on the West Point post, not just near the academy. Going through the gate guards was part of daily life. I had access to its facilities and a view into the Long Gray Line community connected to the institution. I spent years alongside cadets and people whose lives were organized around responsibility, preparation and service. I was not a cadet. I was an Army kid living there, learning from what I could see and from the people who took time with me.

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Mentorship gave me a sense of duty

Some of the people I knew through that world carried leadership responsibilities at the highest levels, and they mentored me from an early age. They helped shape my focus, work ethic and sense that I should produce something good and useful for the world. I do not take that as a borrowed title or an endorsement of my work. I remember it as a standard: take responsibility for what you make and think about who it serves.

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Then I went to New York to pursue the creative side

I went to FIT because I wanted to study and make things. I am an artist, but I was raised in an environment many people would imagine as the opposite of an artistic life. The contrast gave me perspective and a hunger for new things. Art did not erase the systems I had grown up around. It gave me another way to look at them, question them and make something that had not been there before.

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I learned to move between different kinds of systems

The institution, the studio, the design program and a technology company do not use the same language. I have spent my life learning how to enter a system, understand how its parts relate and find where I can contribute. At FIT, I developed my creative practice. Later, as a creative lead and CMO working alongside engineers, I carried that perspective into technology and product work.

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The bridge is part of who I am

I do not think of my path as leaving one world to enter another. The Army upbringing gave me an early view of institutions, leadership and duty. Art and design gave me a way to stay curious, question what exists and make new things. Visiting more than 120 countries has made me attentive to how systems and daily life change across borders. It does not make me an authority on every place; local knowledge and governance still matter. That combination is part of why I can move between creative work, systems design and software, and why I care about building something useful rather than stopping at an idea.

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Read how AI helped me build Countercult as its CTO ↗Read how building Countercult changed my approach to data and design ↗Read the Countercult product design and founder case study ↗Return to the Journal ↗