It started with a computer. I was writing BASIC on my Atari 800XL when I was a kid, making small games of my own. When we got our first home computer, I promptly took it apart: sound cards, graphics cards, upgrades, and all the Windows tweaking that came with it. I did it because I loved video games, and I wanted to play them at their best. I taught myself to build computers and to write code, all in service of that one love. It never felt like work. It was just what I did.
I come from a family of storytellers. We're a huge family, modern day bards really, and we all talk all the time. You could sit back and watch any one of us hold court with a good story. I learned from them - my grandfather was my role model. And each is worth their salt. I still talk to my mom, my brothers, and a few cousins every day. That's where it all started for me: home, family, and the stories we tell.
Home has always meant Chicago to me. I was born here, I went to college here, and I've never lived anywhere else. I'm a city boy through and through - concrete is my blood. I live downtown and love being in the center of everything. The suburbs were never for me: nothing is by you out there; everything's too spread out. I could see a tiny town someday, though - somewhere with one Main Street, and I'd be right there on it. Center of a big city, or the one Main Street of a small town. Nothing in between.
And I love this city. It's got the aggressiveness and no-bullshit attitude of the east coast, but it's still warm and welcoming like the Midwest. Here, everyone is family. Some of that's my Italian roots. Some of it's just how we are here.
My family is everything, and that carried over into the family I have now. My wife Katie and my son are my whole world. I'm truly happy for the first time in my life. And the good times come with it: I go to a lot of concerts, easily over 500 bands going back 30 years, and my wife's my best friend so we still do 5 to 10 shows a year. And now my boy's starting to come too - he loves music as much as we do. Music is always playing here - Katie and I still put records on and just sit and listen. We have a lot of fun together - music, sports, movies, video games. You name it, and we're all doing it. I've been a gamer since I was a kid; I even helped build a game once.
And there's my boy, CJ. The funny part is he looks exactly like me, and in many ways he acts like me and has my mannerisms. My cousin once saw us together and we each made a similar joke to her. She stopped, looked back and forth at each of us and said, "oh no, there's two of you now." But damn, he's so much more. He's smarter, more disciplined, more focused, more responsible, and just flat out better at life than I ever was, even when I was ten years older than he is now. And he's always been that way. Every day I'm genuinely excited to watch his life unfold. I have the dream life for many parents: what if you could have a kid who was just a better version of you? I really am the luckiest guy on earth.
But it wasn't always easy. I went through real loss and had a lot of growing up to do. I had to learn to forgive myself. I hit a point where I didn't recognize who I was, this sad, passive, risk-averse version of me instead of the guy who loved life, took chances, and made things happen. I had to find a way to marry those two people, and it took a lot of work. I feel whole again now. I'm happy, and I'm better for the people around me. When you see me now, it's usually smiling.
Which brings me back to the stories. I'm the luckiest person around - I've got a habit of being in the right place at the right time, so there's a funny story behind just about everything that's ever happened to me. Even the darkest stuff has a tale. All I really care about is sharing those stories. Not to brag. To bring everyone in, the way people have gathered around a dinner sharing stories for thousands of years. Let's all laugh and experience them together.
That same drive carried me into a career. I went to college for creative writing, but it wasn't for me at the time. I left in 1999 and started in IT support, because I knew how to fix computers. Back then my joke was, if you could spell "PC" you could get a job. I was made supervisor of the support team after only a few months, and went on to a well-known early Chicago consulting firm, Whittman-Hart, as one of the specialists on the help desk. I worked through Y2K and, for the first time, started working on projects alongside a project manager. Then a merger went sideways and the company folded.
I spent the next few years in support, and I was unhappy. I was stuck in neutral, making less than I had a few years before, and I could see automation starting to reshape the work. I realized I didn't love it enough to fight my way to the top of it.
What I actually wanted was to work with people, to use my creativity, and to build things instead of just fixing them. A conversation with Maria Dubov, founder of MMD Services, opened my eyes to jobs I'd never even heard of. And a friend gave me the best advice I ever got: if you really want to learn something, do it for free.
So I did. I took short-term contract work that didn't pay much but taught me the basics, technical writing, business analysis. I got in with a startup and learned product development from the ground up. I bounced around for a few years, gaining experience everywhere I could. Then a friend called: there's a crash coming, she said, get in somewhere permanent. She had an open role. I joined her at SurePayroll as a business analyst, and I was happy. I learned system and data analysis, QA, and how to develop against requirements. I became a manager, and I went out and earned my PMP.
Then came the trade-off no parent wants to make. I had a baby, and I was commuting to the northern suburbs with days I didn't see my boy at all. So when an opportunity came up to come back downtown, I took it, becoming the manager of the business analysis team at JPMorganChase. I learned how to scale for enterprise: audits, process improvement, program and portfolio management, architecture. The list goes on.
But I've always been a builder. So when I was offered the chance to create a department from scratch, I couldn't pass it up. I became a director in the pressure cooker of consulting, the kind of place where, as I used to say, one year of experience was worth three anywhere else. It was stressful and difficult, and I moved through different leadership roles as the market shifted. But I learned how to lead full-stack product teams doing cutting-edge work, I learned UX and CX and experiential design, and most importantly, I learned how to manage clients. Along the way I got to build things most people never touch: a VR game, work with some of the highest-profile sports teams in the world, projects with two of the most famous hospitals in America. But after ten years, I was ready to move on.
In 2024 I joined Vi as Director of Information Systems and Services. And I've never been happier, a great manager, a great team, a wonderful company. It's the best work of my career, and I'm exactly where I want to be. My growth is continuing here. I learned analysis, project management, development, and now I'm growing in AI. My career is still a fulfilling adventure.
I grew up on the south side of Chicago. My parents had a picture window in our kitchen, and every morning I'd eat breakfast looking out at the Sears Tower, at the time the tallest building in the world. It was an amazing sight to wake up to. And now I work on the 84th floor, where I can see my parents' house from my office window.
The kid who took apart computers, and the man who builds things every day, they're the same person. The person and the professional were never really two sides at all. They were always one, coming back to where they started.