A walking contradiction.

At twelve, I recognized a practical need surrounding mobile-home setup and began selling the materials required to solve it. At sixteen, I started a cigar company that was later sold; its products and accessories reached Nordstrom stores in the Pacific Northwest. Neither undertaking began as an attempt to construct a founder narrative. A need existed, a system could be built around it, and the market provided an immediate test of whether the reasoning was sound.

In 1998, while attending college, I founded Vertigo Group. What began in technology developed over decades into work spanning engineering, infrastructure development, enterprise architecture, solutions design, cybersecurity, enterprise systems, business innovation and technology strategy.

Entrepreneurship taught me early that ideas eventually answer to consequence: understand the system well enough to act, then remain willing to revise the model when reality supplies better evidence.

I became a commercial pilot with airplane single-engine, multiengine and instrument privileges and later a flight instructor holding CFI, CFII and MEI credentials. I flew professionally, instructed, performed aerobatics in airshows and studied aviation through the lenses of aerospace, aviation safety and human factors.

An aircraft is indifferent to status, intention and rhetorical skill. Accidents and incidents made risk, preparation and mortality more than subjects for analysis. They sharpened the distinction between calculated exposure and confidence unsupported by comprehension.

“The worst moment to discover the boundary of your competence is after you have already crossed it.”

That distinction traveled readily into entrepreneurship, investment and leadership. Risk cannot be eliminated without also eliminating meaningful action; it can, however, be identified, priced, mitigated and accepted deliberately.

Technology institutionalizes impermanence. Decades spent as an engineer, technologist, solutions expert, infrastructure developer, enterprise architect and cybersecurity consultant made adaptation less an aspiration than an operating requirement. Competence matters; continuing relevance requires the willingness to question the answer that competence previously produced.

I also built and operated a real estate enterprise and portfolio, worked as a principal broker and operated across acquisition, investment, ownership, property operations, brokerage, negotiation, financing and leverage. Every financial model eventually encountered tenants, lenders, insurers, contractors, regulators, attorneys, buyers and sellers—each bringing incentives and behavior that did not fit neatly into the spreadsheet.

Technology taught me that the system changes; real estate taught me that the system was never as impersonal as it looked. Together they produced a more durable understanding of strategy: architecture matters, but so do the people operating inside it.

My education crossed law, business, entrepreneurship, aviation safety, human factors, psychology, aerospace, meteorology and finance. I earned six degrees, including a Ph.D. in Business and Entrepreneurship, because each discipline exposed variables the previous one handled incompletely.

As a scholar, Director of Academics and professor, I taught across aerospace, aviation safety, human factors, business and finance, while also working as a research scientist, data analyst and author. That work reinforced a standard I still use: an idea is not fully understood until it can be explained clearly, examined openly and revised when the evidence changes.

Broadcasting from KUIK in Portland, podcasting, public speaking and advisory work extended the same discipline into other rooms: difficult ideas must remain accurate without becoming inaccessible.