Raised in Brooklyn. Collected books about animals and far-off places. Weekends hiking in upstate New York; a summer building trails in the Rockies. Gap year: taught kids to ski in Crested Butte, Colorado. Long hair phase. Studied at Brown. A semester in Ecuador; an international relations degree. Worked as a caretaker for endangered gibbons in Southern California. Moved to San Francisco during the first dot-com boom. Got a job in PR; didn’t get any stock options. Backpacked across Asia for a year. Invented a dessert sushi in Laos, immortalized in Lonely Planet.

That’s when journalism began. Assignments: immigration protests along the Mexican border, the world’s most remote inhabited island, the Arctic Ocean in dead of winter aboard a research vessel drifting through sea ice. Work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic and elsewhere. Joined the faculty at The School of The New York Times, an experiential journalism program for high school students.

Co-founded Camping to Connect, a program led by people of color that guides young men from underserved communities into the outdoors—mentorship, vulnerability, brotherhood. Produced Wood Hood, an award-winning documentary.

Helped develop Portals—immersive spaces placed in refugee camps, schools, and public spaces worldwide—where strangers meet face-to-face across distances. Launched RickshawNYC, a hand-painted cycle rickshaw from Bangladesh, now moving through New York as public art and a living cultural tradition.

A throughline: contact—with people, with places, with lives not your own.