A builder, still surprised
by his own resume.
Canadian entrepreneur. Managing Director of a design-build manufacturing organization. Board director. Podcast host. Builder of businesses, brands, spaces, and ideas.
When I look back at my own resume, it honestly surprises me a little. Somehow, over the past couple of decades, I've gone from software development and startup ideas to manufacturing, acquisitions, governance, design-build projects, entrepreneurship, and boardrooms.
Some of it was carefully planned. A lot of it wasn't.
Software, then small businesses.
I started in software — building things, breaking things, and learning what makes a small business actually work. From there I ended up building and selling a handful of small companies, which taught me a lot about how businesses get put together, where they fall apart, and the difference between a clever idea and a durable one.
None of it was particularly glamorous. Most of it was the kind of work that doesn't make for a good story until much later — figuring out cash flow, hiring people who were better than me, trying to keep customers happy without losing my mind.
Design, build, manufacture, repeat.
Today I'm the Managing Director of a Canadian design-build manufacturing organization, leading a team of 50+ people across operations, design, manufacturing, and project delivery. The work spans architectural, industrial, and commercial environments, but the through-line is the same one I've always been drawn to: people making real things, well.
I won't talk much about specific clients or projects here — that's not really what this site is for. But the day-to-day is a mix of operations, strategy, design conversations, and trying to make a complicated business feel a little less complicated for the people inside it.
Boards & cooperatives.
For a number of years, I served on the boards of Canadian financial cooperatives — specifically credit unions. The work was grounded in growth, risk, and the slower, quieter discipline of helping member-owned organizations make good long-term decisions. The kind of decisions that don't always feel exciting in the moment but tend to matter a lot in retrospect.
That governance experience included the completion of a $35 billion merger bringing together roughly 500,000 members — a long, careful piece of work that taught me a lot about scale, member trust, and how seriously good cooperatives take their own democracy.
For the record: I'm an ICD.D, hold a PMP®, and finished an Executive MBA somewhere in the middle of all of this. I list them because they're earned — not because I think they explain anything important about how I actually work.
A second Master's — in law.
I'm currently working through a Master of Laws (LL.M.) at Osgoode Hall Law School — my second Master's degree. I came to it through the work: a long-running interest in how contracts actually function on construction sites, and what happens when the people doing the building don't have the leverage to negotiate the paper that governs them.
My major research paper focuses on CCDC contracts, contract law, and the power imbalance between large general contractors and minority subcontractors. It's the kind of structural, dry-on-the-surface topic that turns out to determine a surprising amount about whether real businesses survive their first big project.
Land, buildings, napkin drawings.
On the side, I'm working on a few real estate and development projects — some commercial, some recreational, some still mostly drawings on a napkin. They're the kind of long-term ideas I enjoy quietly chipping away at, and a lot of them probably won't make sense to anyone but me until they do.
More of those are on the Projects page.
“At the end of the day, I still feel more like a builder than a corporate executive.
The short list.
The things I keep coming back to, in no particular order. They overlap more than the categories suggest.
- Leadership and how good teams actually work
- Design, craft, and the discipline of making things well
- Placemaking and the long arc of buildings, towns, and neighbourhoods
- Entrepreneurship in industries that aren't trendy
- Governance and the slow, quiet machinery of good decisions
- Real estate, especially the overlooked kind
- Organizational culture, and why it's mostly invisible until it's gone
- Complex problems with a lot of moving parts and several good answers
For speaking, podcasting, boards, or anything worth a conversation.
I'm usually open to a good conversation — speaking engagements, advisory work, podcast guesting, board considerations, or just an interesting idea worth talking through. Form below works; so does LinkedIn.