Some kids come out of the womb calmly assembling Lego castles with the concentration of a German watchmaker and you just know they’re headed for a future in orthopedic surgery or actuarial science or whatever profession requires a person to enjoy following instructions. Other kids hurl themselves off the roof of a treehouse with a beach towel tied around their neck and you think: there goes tomorrow’s stunt pilot.

 

If I could’ve chosen my own destiny, I probably would’ve become an astrobiologist. I spent my whole childhood convinced that I was an alien. But at age six, when I won my first advertising award, it became clear that I was something far stranger, more grotesque: a copywriter. 

I spent the next twenty years attempting to outrun it. Right out of college, I became a case assistant at a law firm in Boston, where I learned that there is a right way and a wrong way to attach two pieces of paper in the eyes of the American legal system. Was it a staple when it should have been a paper clip? A paper clip instead of a staple? To this day, I don't know. But I was put on a PIP within what felt like my first seven minutes, so I moved to New Jersey to be the operations manager at an education non-profit, where I continued to wreak even more paperwork-related havoc. Somewhere in Newark, there is probably still a fluorescent-lit building technically operating outside the law because I got distracted making a playlist.

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To be fair, it was hard to care about all the PAST DUE envelopes piling up on my desk because my band had just gone semi-viral on YouTube and we were somehow charting at #15 on rock radio. So I quit my job, signed a management deal, went on tour, and sorta-kinda lived in my Honda Odyssey. It was fun, but it's the kind of thing you can only do when you're twenty-five.

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By twenty-six, I was certain that if I had to eat one more gas station snack or Starbucks pastry for dinner, I would die.  So I sold my van and stumbled ass-backwards into an ad agency. And for the first time in my adult life, I felt like I was finally home. 

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It was as if I had been a sleeper agent my whole life, and my first creative brief activated me like the Manchurian candidate. I sprang to life like a cursed doll, spewing headlines, and never stopped. 

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Since then, I’ve worked agency-side and brand-side, at giant companies and tiny ones, in America and Canada (a random six-year side quest), both the well and the Unwell. I've launched and relaunched brands and made work that has put them at the center of culture. I’ve been recognized at international award shows, won Fortune 50 pitches, turned around creative departments, built agencies, taught advertising classes, and made some of my best friends along the way.

I'm proud to be living proof to creatives entering the industry that you don't have to go to ad school or win a million pencils or have a portfolio full of Spike Jonze spots to succeed. Just work hard, be nice, and make stuff you'd want your ex to see. 

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Outside of work, I’m usually writing songs, reading, hiking, gossiping with my dog, or threatening to write a novel. Maybe something about aliens. I don't know. 

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