Builder first, leader second.

I've spent my career at the intersection of strategy and execution, and I like it there. At T-Mobile, I lead creative development for high-stakes digital experiences. Through Empac, I bring that same thinking to established businesses who've outgrown what off-the-shelf tools can do for them.

Before any of that, I was a racing kid who taught himself to design because nobody was going to build his brand for him.

I started racing go-karts at 12. By 15, I was behind the wheel of a 410 sprint car — a 900-horsepower open-wheel machine with no traction control, no power steering, and no room for hesitation. I won the karting grand nationals that year and got invited to the Red Bull Driver Search. I was the youngest person there.

Racing didn't become a career, but it shaped everything that came after. It taught me to commit to a line before you can see where it goes. It taught me that preparation matters more than talent. And it taught me that the gap between “good enough” and “great” is usually a decision someone was afraid to make.

When I wasn't racing, I was building things. At 16, I started Emerald Pacific Outfitters — a scrappy brand that made apparel and shot videos to help action sports athletes in the Pacific Northwest get noticed by sponsors. That eventually became Empac.

To fund it, I worked at the Apple Store in Tacoma. I kept submitting work samples to Apple's corporate teams until one of them invited me to Cupertino for a project. I spent five months designing internal tools, building product guides, and supporting the UX team on usability research. When that wrapped up, T-Mobile brought me in.

I started at T-Mobile as a design intern. Four roles and eight years later, I lead creative development for some of their highest-priority digital experiences — the savings calculator used by millions of customers, FN5GL, Super Bowl landing pages, campaign deal hubs, and the T-Mobile.com redesign. The work is fast, high-stakes, and built for an audience of tens of millions.

Empac has been running the whole time. What started as a one-person action sports brand has evolved into a consultancy that helps established businesses figure out the right technology approach for their business. Sometimes that means configuring what they already have. Sometimes it means finding them the right platform. Sometimes it means building something custom from scratch. The value is knowing which one.

I studied business at the University of Washington with a focus on marketing, then supplemented it with several years of computer science coursework. The combination of business strategy and technical execution is the thing I keep coming back to — it's what I do at T-Mobile, it's what I do at Empac, and it's what I look for in every project I take on.