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THE FAM

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A BRIEF HISTORY

I've had varying career aspirations since I was a kid - stunt man, basketball shoe designer, the next baritone for Boyz II Men - all of which faded as I grew older.  The two things that remained constant in my life were writing and design, an intersection introduced and fostered by my anachronistic dad.

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I studied English in college, graduated magna cum laude, and won the university-wide fiction contest two years in a row.  Though I was accepted into 12 MFA programs following graduation, I was inspired by my brother and favorite authors to travel instead.  I rode motorcycles through the Philippines, lived on a Cacao farm in Costa Rica, hitchhiked through Thailand, and ate my way through the countryside of Portugal.  

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I ultimately landed in Boston where, like a true aspiring writer, I spent my twenties working any job that sounded cool and paid the rent (re: truck driver, laborer on the Fort Point fishing docks, fedora-wearing hotel doorman, butcher, fiction teacher in Harvard Square, and bike messenger).  

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My tech career took off in 2016 when I was hired as a content writer at IDEO.  I studied both UX design and UX writing in the little free time that I had (Georgia Institute of Technology, Berghs School of Communication, UX Writing Hub), a combination that ultimately led me to the career in content design that I love today.

 

My other passion is community outreach.  I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for the help of other people, and my goal is simply to give back in whatever ways that I can. I love using what I know about content design and strategy to help small businesses grow.

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I also spent three years spearheading the community outreach projects for Whole Foods Market's Chapel Hill location, working closely with organizations like TABLE, Toys for Tots, Habitat for Humanity, and the Ronald McDonald House.

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I live on a small island on the east coast of Florida, where I spend my free time having unintentionally philosophical conversations with my three-year-old, Finn (e.g. Where does the wind live?  Do trees have friends?  Do my shoes like my shirt?)

A BIT ABOUT PIZZA

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August 1st, 2024
I grew up in a small, waterfront town in Connecticut.  There was a large Italian population, and good pizza abounded.  I have very specific memories of mustachioed men handing me cups of fresh mozzarella to eat as I watched them toss dough. Everything about it was magical to me - the heat, the noise, the flour-covered shirts, the continuous ringing of corded phones, the strange cartoons on the pizza boxes, the warmth of the box on my lap on the way home.  

Today, I spend weekdays doing design work and weekends learning the craft of making wood-fired pizza at a small, waterfront pizza place here on Amelia Island off the coast of Florida.  It's recreational and fun, and handing out cups of mozzarella to other people's kids feels strangely full-circle. It's nice to have a little extra money rolling in in between design gigs (especially with a 3-year-old), but it's more about staying abreast of the aforementioned memory.

I'll let the words of Anthony Bourdain sum up the rest:

"...for a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food...".  Or, in my specific case, with something as simple as a thin, crispy pizza.

 
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