My career forced me to become both an operator and a creative. I've stopped apologizing for the mix.

My path through marketing has been less of a ladder than a series of rooms I probably wasn't supposed to be in. I built and sold a company. I advised founders through Growth Rehab. I ran agency teams and managed portfolios across dozens of industries. I helped a South African brand determine whether the U.S. market wanted what it had. I built a partner program for a B2B network company that, until then, didn't really have one.

None of those jobs prepared me for the next one. All of them did. Running my own company made every marketing dollar feel like a real decision, because it was. Brand work taught me that most "marketing problems" are clarity problems wearing a costume. Partner work taught me that the most durable growth usually happens in the quiet space between two companies, not inside either one.

I'm a business person who is unusually comfortable with creative work — and a creative person who is unusually comfortable with a P&L.

I tend to make decisions by working backward from what the company is actually trying to become, not from what marketing is excited to ship this quarter. I gravitate toward systems because I've watched too many good campaigns disappear without leaving anything behind, and toward execution because I've watched too many good strategies do the same.

The unconventional resume isn't a quirk. It's the reason I can sit in a pricing conversation in the morning and a brand review in the afternoon and feel useful in both.