Intellect shouldn’t be at odds with real-world resonance. This work, helping innovators define themselves and reach a wider audience, is my way of proving it.  

How can I be so sure? Because I’ve spent my professional career bridging high culture and everyday life. This career began many years ago, with a practice in a sense not so different from what I do today: bringing inspiring, and sometimes challenging, projects to the public, then as an arts journalist in my hometown of Toronto. 

But for me, it was never enough to stay at the surface level. Voraciously interested in the widest array of topics, I overloaded on coursework to earn a bachelors of both arts and science, before finally settling on my true love – writing – and enrolling in a Ph.D. program in German literature at Cornell University. 

There, I learned the history of literature and art, and trained to operate at a high conceptual level, publishing papers on Walter Benjamin’s theories of art and politics, and eighteenth-century German playwrights, for example. 

Yet my real pleasure remained making these high concepts relevant to the public today. I enjoy seeing complex ideas take shape in ways that surprise and engage people. I tried to do this kind of work inside the university, designing and teaching a course to undergrads on the social significance of team sports, for example. But I was met with institutional resistance the whole way. 

So I left academia,  because I wanted to speak to the public again, to meet people, as Germans say, at eye level. I spent six years in marketing and sales in the wine industry, first in the beautiful upstate New York countryside and then here in Berlin. 

In the wine industry, I honed my ability to read an audience, speak in their own language, and build connections in real time, with everyone from rural Pennsylvanians, sommeliers at Michelin-starred restaurants in New York City, to hip restaurateurs in Berlin.

But I had gone too far in the other direction. It was all surface-level.

So I returned to arts journalism and began the work I do now. 

To me, this work is a culmination of my experiences and skills. I take an interpretive approach to my clients and their projects, unearthing deeper meanings and patterns in their practice using skills I developed in the university. I’m able to synthesize these underlying patterns with the clarity, precision, and ear for diverse target audiences gained from years in journalism and marketing. And my broad interests and educational background allows me to support clients ranging from AI tech startups to abstract expressionist painters to NGOs offering services to young immigrants. 

I feel uniquely privileged to offer these services, which I understand as a kind of translation. I believe true art and cultural work speaks for itself; it doesn’t need our labels, whether memes, political categories, or hip theoretical concepts. But it can still be translated for a wider audience, tailored to their interests, needs, and styles.  

I believe that finding the right language for such translation requires deep listening, analytical acumen, and empathy in a broad sense: a desire to understand both my clients and the broader public. That’s the kind of communication I’m committed to: helping innovators connect with others, and maybe even with themselves.