Thirty-plus years of not being asked, then a microphone.

When I was eight, my mom died suddenly. My parents were divorced, and I was visiting my dad in another state when it happened. In one afternoon, I lost my mom, my home, my school, the whole shape of my daily life. Nobody really talked about it. The adults kept moving, so I learned to do the same. I got very good at holding it together.

In 2022, a grad-school project at the University of Florida turned into The Life Shift, a podcast where I ask strangers about their before and after, the line in the sand where everything shifted. I wasn't trying to heal. I was just curious. Nearly three hundred conversations later, I realized I'd spent thirty-plus years asking everyone else the question nobody had asked me.

Figure out what's actually true, then build something honest around it.

That's the same instinct I bring to my day job. I'm the Head of Digital Content at Optimal Blue, a fintech company serving the mortgage industry, where I write and design most of what the company says in public: the website, paid media, social, blogs and articles, digital signage, event signage, and the Optimal Insights video and podcast platform, plus managing our graphic designer. In the past year that work grew YouTube views 5× and podcast engagement 35%+ year-over-year, which is the kind of thing that gets you named a 2026 HousingWire Marketing Leader, an honor I'm still a little stunned by.

Whether the medium is a grief conversation, a market update, or a coloring book, the job is the same: listen for what's real, then design the container that carries it well.