About Me

• Born and raised in New York.
  • Grew up in small town in Westchester County, a suburb 20 mins north of NYC
  • Lived in NYC the majority of my adult life
  • Currently in Fort Greene, Brooklyn with my wonderful wife Chiu-Yi and hopefully our soon-to-be-adopted dog
• Grew up playing Sports and Video Games. The sport I stuck to the most was Basketball (from 3rd grade through Varsity). While I wasn’t on the court or training, I was playing video games (Last system I had was an Xbox 360 - Assassin’s Creed was the best).
  • My parents love to tease me that when I was 8 and we went to the Grand canyon I played my Game Boy the whole time, looked up and said, “Cool. A big hole.” and went back to playing.
• Travel is the backbone of my personality. Always looking to understand more about other’s cultures.
  • My favorite places I’ve been: Indonesia, Hawaii, New Zealand, Taiwan, Prague, Sicily, Sardinia, Iceland, Puerto Rico.
  • In 2017- 2018 I gave up my Manhattan apartment to spend 3 month stretches in different cities while working remotely. I stayed in Austin, TX; San Diego, CA; Denver, CO; Park City, UT; Portland, OR within a 1.5 yr time span.
• I started Because Ventures in late 2019 because I believe that the Nonprofit model is broken and Corporations don’t need to be evil to make piles of money. Aligning Good-for-the-world missions with smart, profitable biz-building practices has worked many times in the past. And will again in the future.
• Weird fact about me: I’m 6’4” and afraid of heights.
• Favorite Books:
• I believe Prioritization is the most important, least practiced skill in life. I operate under some basic prioritization frameworks:
• Honesty and transparency are the most important things to me. I want to be in an environment where people have the trust required to be open, honest, and vulnerable with each other. I think this fosters the highest-performing teams, and I am committed to creating that environment.
• A few quotes I live by:

Communication

• I always lean on the side of Overcommunicating. We’re working on many complex projects with multiple moving parts. I’m always happy to spend more time explaining things and re-reviewing concepts.
• Radical Candor is a communication style and life philosophy I live by. The expectation is honest and transparent communication delivered from a healthy and well-intentioned place. When conflict arises or feedback needs to be given, I look for direct, factual, data-driven communication style, where we talk about concepts objectively.
  • Good Guiding Principle: Talk about the process/thing. Not the person.
• I’m a fast-, loud-talking New Yorker. Feel free to throw on closed captions and ask me to slow down or repeat myself.
• I believe in async comms delivered at any time, but the response is delivered when the person is ready to respond. I’ll send you messages (Slack) and expect to receive messages anytime, but won’t get back to you outside of one of my planned Comms Clean out calendar blocks unless it’s urgent.
  • I don’t expect you to respond immediately but within a reasonable time frame (1-2 biz days) or the given deadline in the message.
  • If it is urgent, please clearly indicate that with a timeline on when you need help by.
• I like a crisp document and a messy L10 meeting.

Team Members