The short one's on the home page. This is the whole thing — a handful of beautiful life chapters, a lot of coffee, and one consistent theme: pulling people up the ladder of engagement, members into participants, participants into champions.
Wisconsin · 1975–1999
Homestead beginnings
I grew up outside Eau Claire, Wisconsin, raised by two anti-establishment hippies — my dad ran a siding business, my mom taught high-school art. By the late '90s I was running a forklift by day and teaching myself web design by night.
My first real project was a Quake II clan site. I reverse-engineered it with View Source, and somehow it won a handful of "Website of the Day" awards — all the encouragement I needed to start freelancing. You couldn't go to school for this stuff yet. You just had to discover it.
My dad and me, a Wisconsin winter.
My parents — certified anti-establishment hippies.
Somewhere around first grade.
The machine that started it all.
Chicago · 2000–2015
The dotcom years
I moved to Chicago with two web-design friends, right into the boom, and stayed fifteen years. I bounced through design, marketing, and instructional design before landing on the Obama 2012 Tech Team at HQ for a year and a half — still one of the great experiences of my life.
Outside work, the thing that shaped everything after was the bike. I started commuting everywhere by it — and you can't ride a city every day without seeing its inequities and infrastructure up close — so I joined my Hamlin Park neighborhood association and started a community garden. Around then, Bruce Mau’s Massive Change lit me up about design as a force for good — social design, social entrepreneurship — and it never wore off. (I also captained an APA pool team for eight years, retiring and un-retiring more than once, and co-founded Public Good, a startup building software for nonprofits.)
My Obama 2012 HQ badge.
Eight years on the Gold Star pool team.
Campaign buttons, my sense of humor.
Chicago — fifteen good years.
Public Good, from the ground up.
Eau Claire · 2015–2020
Coming home
We came back north, where I did remote work for clients like Scripps, Four Seasons, and US Foods. I also opened SHIFT Cyclery & Coffee Bar — part bike shop, part coffee bar, all community hub — started a Code for America brigade, sat on boards for bikes and transit, and chaired the city's Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission. All while raising two sons.
Building community happens over caffeine and spokes about as much as it happens over pixels.
SHIFT Cyclery & Coffee Bar, winter evening.
Why we came back north.
Raising two sons, mostly by bike.
Bike advocacy, one valet at a time.
Back north, where the rivers are.
Wisconsin winters, worth it.
Washington, D.C. · 2020–2025
Defense Digital Service
Then came five years at the Defense Digital Service, on some of the hardest, most human UX problems I've ever touched. My team sat inside the Secretary of Defense's office; my director reported directly to then–Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.
The research took me to some unusual rooms — a control center in the basement of the Pentagon, up at Camp David, a few bases in Iraq. Go where the work is, indeed.
My father passed away during those years.
He was so proud of me.
Whether it's national security or a neighborhood bike lane, solving a problem starts the same way: understanding people where they are, and designing systems that actually work for them.
Five years pointed at the Pentagon.
A few challenge coins to show for it.
Camp David — go where the work is.
The work took me to the flight line.
Operations centers, not conference rooms.
Now
Present tense
These days I'm engaged to a wonderful art teacher (my mom approves), remodeling our home one project at a time, and still happiest with friends, coffee, kayaking, frisbee, music, and a good D&D session.
I want to spend the next chapter helping communities — especially the rural ones everyone overlooks — build the digital public spaces where people connect, participate, and feel valued. Same kid who reverse-engineered that clan site with View Source, still just trying to level everybody up.
Golden hour on the lake.
Where the work happens now.
A seat at the table.
Back home, with Jenna.
Home, one remodel at a time.
It all runs on colleaguery — doing great work with people you respect, and stretching the circle wider so more of them get to come along.
I've used the word lovingly for years, ever since I found it in The Well-Tempered Audio Dramatist — a manifesto of its own by Yuri Rasovsky, the Chicago radio producer who founded the National Radio Theater:
“Professionalism begets colleaguery, that spirit of mutual support and collective identity that contributes so potently to creative exchange and the sense of ensemble. It is your responsibility to engender this spirit by setting an amiable, stimulating, creative and professional example.”
My dad and me, a Wisconsin winter.
My parents — certified anti-establishment hippies.
Somewhere around first grade.
The machine that started it all.
