My superpower is being interested. It's the thread that connects every story. My career is a collection of experiences where I dove into complex industries, learned the nuance, and then built the communication strategy to drive revenue. Here’s how I learned to do it.
My professional life started in my parents’ educational supply store. It was the ultimate crash course in business: marketing, margins, key accounts, and community. It’s where I first saw that driving revenue was directly tied to channel development and serving a community—a lesson that defines my work to this day.
My first "real" job out of college was as a legislative analyst for a top-tier lobbying firm. This wasn't an internship; it was C-level training. I was in the room, auditing committees, writing briefs, and understanding the complex interplay of the public-private space. It taught me how to speak the language of executives and build consensus between high-stakes stakeholders.
As a new Advisor at Prudential, my manager challenged me to find a market I could "own." So I did. I saw an opportunity in college planning, rewrote the company's seminar, and built my own marketing collateral. I then personally booked that seminar in a dozen schools, getting me in front of 600 prospective clients.
This three-vertical marketing approach—before "funnels" were a buzzword—led to 17 new meetings a week and landed me as a Top 10 First-Year Producer in the region. It proved my core thesis: a targeted message to a defined audience in the right channel works.
My writing and marketing skills took me to Madison Avenue, producing executive education conferences on highly technical network infrastructure. I learned to "speak geek," translating complex engineering concepts for Fortune 1,000 executives.
My real win was supporting the sales teams. I created compelling content and targeted data that drove $10 million in revenue from my events. I became the go-to leader for new product launches, learning from seasoned, high-dollar sales professionals.
The MWW Group, a top-tier communications firm, recruited me to their Investor Relations team. This is where I became a true translator. I was the bridge between Wall Street and our clients, writing the websites, pitch decks, and press releases.
I worked with PetSmart (helped take them from $3 to $14/share), Trans World Entertainment (navigated them through the Napster lawsuit), and Zany Brainy (managed comms into bankruptcy). I was the key contact for institutional investors, managed $65k in monthly retainers, and became a mainstay on new business efforts.
My entrepreneurial drive took over. A CEO at a client company asked if anyone could write a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM). I raised my hand and said "yes." As he walked away, I Dogpiled examples to learn how. I delivered, and it became a new niche.
This led me to a business development client, Virtual Logistix. Outside of the surgeon CEO and his CTO, I was the company—building the messaging, decks, and business cases. We did the Silicon Valley roadshow and he eventually sold the company to Bank of America for over
$100 million.
Life has a way of testing you. A life-altering skiing trauma stopped my career in its tracks. A three-year rehab followed. It taught me resilience and forced me to refocus.
I came back, got all my financial licenses, and was recruited by the Hantz Group to be a branch manager for a 25-advisor RIA. My key role? Running the weekly "case design" meeting. I acted as the strategic integrator, bringing the entire office together to collaborate, solution-find, and drive revenue—resulting in a 25% GDC increase in the practices I directly supported.
My ventures culminated in Responsible College Advocates (RCA). With a team of partners, we built an entire enterprise from scratch. We blended financial services and SaaS tools into an end-to-end sales, marketing, and fulfillment system.
We recruited 65 employees, developed lead-gen systems that produced over $1M a quarter in new business opportunities, and deployed a massive content strategy across a modern tech stack. We built the engine, proved it worked, and served thousands of clients.
This is the "why." My career hasn't been a straight line. It's been a series of trials and triumphs that built a creative problem-solver, a technical storyteller, and a leader who knows how to build the path to "yes" and grow the business.
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