Attorney. Chef. Casino analyst. Economic developer. Innkeeper. Tenured professor. AI practitioner. Author. Every domain taught the same lesson from a different angle - the capacity to navigate without a map isn't just useful. It's the whole game.
That disorientation forced me to learn the one skill nobody teaches: how to walk when you don't know where you're going.
Every identity I've inhabited taught the same lesson from a different angle. I was the numbers guy for leaders at one of the largest casinos on the Vegas Strip. I was a data-analyst chef before "data" meant what it means now. I helped lead entrepreneurial development in the Colorado Governor's office. I went to law school for the awareness, not the career. Andrea and I built a hospitality company and one of Colorado's top-rated boutique inns from nothing, in one of the state's smallest ski resort towns. I taught innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship at universities for fifteen years. I've sold everything from spreadsheets to cinnamon hugs - our renowned version of the cinnamon roll.
Every domain taught the same lesson from a different vantage. Numbers taught how to see patterns beneath noise. The kitchen taught leadership under time pressure. Building a hospitality company with Andrea taught intention and discovery simultaneously. Teaching taught how to develop these capacities in others. Law taught seeing clearly through complexity. Advising innovators taught the difference between what founders say they need and what they actually need.
Then AI arrived, and what had been a useful skill set became an essential one. The question went from "how do you leave the path?" to "what do you do when there is no path?" Andrea and I had been living that question together for twenty-five years.
WILD Intelligence is the formal framework for what I had been practicing all along. Not theory from a desk. Practice from a life spent crossing unmapped territory - alongside a partner who navigates every bit of it with me.
Each of these is a full career that most people would have built a life inside. I learned what they had to teach and moved when the learning was done - not from restlessness, but because each one revealed something about how navigation actually works.
JD, University of Colorado. Sought the awareness, not the career. Led entrepreneurial initiatives at the Colorado Governor's Office of Economic Development. Small business attorney. Learned to see clearly through complexity.
Certified Financial Manager. Former data analyst at Mirage Resorts on the Vegas Strip and at Aspen Pet Products. The numbers guy who also cooked. Learned to see the patterns beneath noise.
Co-built The Ruby of Crested Butte with Andrea - highest-rated boutique inn in Colorado across fifteen years of operation. Former chef and restaurant owner. Certified Hospitality Educator. Learned leadership under time pressure.
Tenured professor of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Fifteen years designing and teaching curriculum, still active in higher ed. Stanford Innovation Certificate. IBM Enterprise Design Thinking. Award-winning educator. Learned to develop these capacities in others.
Built and sold two companies with Andrea - a boutique inn and a concierge hospitality business sold on the strength of the system alone. Now building The WILD Navigation Company. Advised founders across sectors for twenty-five years. Learned the difference between what people say they need and what they actually need.
IBM AI Practitioner. IBM Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner. Building inside the Claude ecosystem daily - projects, skills, MCP servers, agent architectures. Not a consultant who uses AI. A practitioner who builds inside it. Learned that AI is a leverage multiplier for whatever the human brings to it.
The range is the point. What looks like a resume that doesn't make sense is the resume of someone who actually navigated - and who can see the pattern beneath domains because he has lived more than one. The WILD Intelligence framework, and the book that carries it, are what emerged from the convergence.
Whether it's about navigation, AI, speaking, or the book - I'd like to hear what you're working on.
Get in Touch