Showing up means more than just being there. It means walking into the room ready to solve problems. Being the teammate people can count on. Giving a shit about the work, but also about the people around you.

Making great work means pushing, even when the timeline is too short, the budget is too small, or there are a dozen things standing in the way. Those things are constraints. They are not excuses. Work with them. Find a way.

And have some fun while you are doing it. We are not saving lives. Most of the time. If everyone is taking themselves too seriously, somebody needs to break the tension, make people laugh, and remind everyone that this is supposed to be enjoyable. I think the work gets better when the culture around it is better.

I have spent the last 25 years building brands and the creative teams behind them. I started out designing brand identities and doing the work myself. Eventually that turned into leading a 45-person in-house agency at EF Education First. The jobs have changed, but the basic challenge really has not: figure out what a brand actually is, get people aligned around it, and then make sure it shows up consistently everywhere.

I tend to be drawn to organizations that are in the middle of figuring something out.

At EF, that meant evolving five very different B2B and D2C brands while also building the creative operation needed to support a fast-growing global company.

Today, at the University of New Hampshire, I am leading a new brand identity across a 160-year-old institution. That means the identity itself, obviously, but it also means mentoring and pushing a central creative team, challenging some long-held assumptions, and continuing to raise the expectations for what a public university can look, sound, and feel like. The work has earned a Marcom Award, which is great, but what matters more to me is seeing the bar continue to move higher across the organization.

At the end of the day, I care most about the work and the people making it.

The best creative teams know where they are going, trust each other, and have enough freedom to try things that might not work. My job is to help create that environment, protect it when necessary, and push the work when I know it can be better.

The work in this portfolio represents me as a Creative Director, but none of it is mine alone. It exists because of a lot of very talented copywriters, designers, photographers, video shooters and editors, project managers, UXers, marketers, strategists, and executives who helped make it happen. It is a team sport after all.