About
The longer version of how I got here
From a sociology degree and a one-way ticket abroad, to building businesses across three continents.
From a sociology degree and a one-way ticket abroad, to building businesses across three continents.
Before there was a business or a name on a door, there was a refusal: of the script I'd been handed, of the version of success I was supposed to want, of the idea that a life had to be earned by waiting until the end of it to start living.
I left a small desert town outside Los Angeles in my twenties with a one-way ticket, about a thousand dollars, and not much else.
There was no safety net and no plan B, and where I come from, a leap like this wasn't a given. Just the conviction that I needed to see the world and find out who I actually was, underneath everything I'd been conditioned to want.
So I went. And I didn't come back for nearly ten years.
The leap had a foundation underneath it. My degree in sociology gave me the lens I've used ever since: how environment, culture, and systems quietly shape the way people live, decide, and build. I was trained to see the system, not just the symptom. To read what's beneath the surface, in people, places, and the institutions they move through.
From there I went deep, testing tools and frameworks from every field I could find, from behavioral psychology to astrology, which I've studied for over a decade, well before it was mainstream. I blend the analytical and the intuitive on purpose. One without the other never tells the whole story.
Florence, Italy taught me slowness as a way of living, not falling behind. Beauty, quality, craft, and connection through community. It showed me a whole culture built around the things that actually matter, where presence is the point and people still make time for each other.
Sydney, Australia taught me a different rhythm. A major city that still moves at the pace of the ocean, where ambition and ease aren't opposites. It showed me you can build something serious without losing yourself to do it.
Building a life from nothing in a new country is hard. I did it three times, from the US to Italy, Italy to Australia, and back again. What that gives you isn't just adaptability. It's the self-trust to do the hard thing when everyone around you says it can't be done, and the courage to follow your own direction no matter who doubts it. That instinct shows up in everything now, especially in business.
For a long time I didn't know what to call what I do. It looked like marketing in one role, brand in another, strategy somewhere else. Eventually the question changed from "what kind of work is this" to "why does it keep finding me." The answer to that question is what I do now.
The Aligned Agency is the practice. ARIA is the same instinct, given a different form. One is a strategic partnership, the other is an AI tool, but the work underneath them is identical: finding what's actually going on and building from there.
Reading what's beneath the surface, in people, in places, and in the businesses I work with, is the same instinct pointed in different directions.
I'm based in Charleston now, and I work with founders and businesses all over the world. The global perspective never left. It's how I see everything.
If something here resonated, there are two places to go next.