I grew up in rural Vermont, where the rule was simple: you fix it yourself before you replace it. That stuck. It's still how I see almost everything — a broken machine, a broken system, a broken stretch of my own life. You don't throw it out. You figure out how it works, and you make it run again.
I started in a kitchen in 1999, washing dishes. Something about the place grabbed me — the pressure, the crew, the craft — and I didn't leave for the better part of two decades. Dishwasher to line cook to sous, chef de cuisine, executive chef. I worked alongside some of the best in Boston and ran rooms of my own. The kitchen taught me how to lead when everything's on fire and the tickets won't stop coming.
Eventually the part of my brain that always needed to know how things worked needed somewhere to go. I moved into electronics and engineering, and I took to it — top of my class, every term. That's where the builder and the technician in me finally met.
At 36, I started my first company. No safety net, no blueprint. What I had was a problem I understood better than almost anyone, and the stubbornness to keep going until it worked.
I'll be straight about the rest: I've rebuilt my life from a hard place, more than once, and I don't hide it. It's the engine under everything here. It's why second chances and hard work will never be slogans to me — and why I spend so much of my energy now holding doors open for the people coming up behind me.
Giving back
For years, as a chef, I gave my time to causes like Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer and Kids Can Cook, and I missed that work the day I left it. Today, the giving I most want to do reaches people fighting through mental health and addiction — a fight I know from the inside. I'm a member of the Revere Chamber of Commerce, putting that energy back into the community I'm part of.