Home: Southern California. Age: 40. Birthplace: New York. Profession: Digital marketing strategist and attorney. Organization: CPM Digital; Height Light LLC. Significant other: My wife, a fellow attorney and my favorite sounding board. Alma mater: Cornell Law School (J.D.); Syracuse University (M.F.A.); Florida State University (B.A.).
Current project: Building AI-assisted marketing and sales systems that connect creative, media, CRM follow-up and dealership outcomes. Latest accomplishment: Helping Toyota dealership clients achieve major market-share gains and generating more than 10x ROI on a targeted lead-generation program. Latest contribution to others: Mentoring marketers and dealership teams on bilingual creative, AI tools, lead follow-up and performance measurement. What’s been your big (or biggest) leap? Leaving an established executive path to build an independent company and a more accountable, multicultural approach to automotive marketing. Hobbies: Writing, cars, technology and developing new business ideas. Last book read: The Creative Act, by Rick Rubin. Recent unique acquisition: A new AI tool before I had fully finished testing the last one.
Personality profile: Curious, direct, strategic, creative and relentlessly practical. What one word would your closest friend use to describe you? Driven. Moral compass: Could I defend this decision publicly—and to the people most affected by it? How do you define a perfect friendship? Loyalty without pretense: two people who can be honest, laugh hard and show up without keeping score. What is your greatest fear? Wasting potential—mine or someone else’s. What is your guilty pleasure? Late-night rabbit holes about cars, technology and improbable business ideas. What word or phrase do you use far too often? Let’s go. What trait do you value most in yourself? The ability to move between creative instinct and analytical discipline without treating them as opposites.
What was your favorite college course? Constitutional law. What book have you repeatedly read? The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. Besides your parents, who has had the greatest influence on your life? My wife—an intellectual equal and a constant source of perspective. What’s the best advice you received growing up? Your word has to mean something. What’s the best advice you received in your career? Follow the result all the way through. A lead is not success; the customer outcome is. What modern technology innovation do you most appreciate? Generative AI—not as a substitute for judgment, but as leverage for better creative, faster analysis and more responsive customer experiences. What is your go-to source of creative inspiration? Real customer conversations, cultural observation and the moment data reveals something the campaign team missed.
What is your big idea?
Marketing should operate as a closed-loop growth system: audience, message, experience, CRM follow-up and sales outcome connected in one measurable chain. What change would you like to see in the world? Opportunity distributed more by talent and effort than by ZIP code, language or inherited access. What message do you want to send out into the world? The communities most often treated as segments deserve to be understood as people. Cultural fluency and respect are performance advantages because they are human advantages. What widely held belief do you reject? More technology automatically creates better marketing. What should every marketer be accountable for? The business outcome and the customer experience—not merely the metric that is easiest to report.
What title would you choose for the movie about your life? Make It Mean Something. What actor would you choose to play you in the movie about your life? Jeffrey Wright. Who would you like to spend an evening with, in heaven? James Baldwin. After your loved ones, what object would you first save from your burning home? My notebooks and hard drives—the record of unfinished ideas. How would you choose to spend tomorrow, if you knew it was your last day on earth? With my wife and the people I love, near the ocean, sharing a long meal and saying everything that matters. What advice would you give your younger self? Do not wait for permission to combine disciplines. The advantage is in being the lawyer, operator, storyteller and marketer at once. What day in your life would you choose to re-live? The day I became licensed as a California attorney.
Personal mission: To turn insight into opportunity—building businesses, campaigns and systems that help people and organizations grow with greater intelligence, fairness and imagination. Personal motto: Make it useful. Make it human. Make it work. Favorite quote: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish” (Steve Jobs). Desired epitaph: He made ideas useful and people feel seen.
