About Me

I'm a technology leader and hands-on operator. I ran the technology function at a multi-channel e-commerce business that grew from a 3-person startup to $8M in peak revenue — infrastructure, identity, networks, data, integration, end-user systems, crisis response, and a team of 10+. I walked in as employee number three and walked out when it was an enterprise. Since 2025 I've been building production AI-powered SaaS tools with Claude Code as my primary development environment.

I didn't just watch that growth happen — I built the systems that made it possible. The inventory management that handled 20,000+ SKUs. The marketplace integrations I coded before commercial tools existed. The infrastructure that went from crashing twice a day to 99.9% uptime. The crisis response that captured $1M+ in 48 hours when COVID turned the entire business upside down. I learned early — running my own retail business first — that technology is either the thing that saves your business or the thing that sinks it. There's not much in between.

The thing I bring to a team is a particular kind of operator instinct: I close the gap between what someone reported, what the system is actually doing, and what the business actually needs. I fix root causes, not symptoms. I absorb operational complexity so leadership can focus on strategy — I'm the person executives call when they need a problem to genuinely stop being their problem, not just get patched. And I don't reach for AI as a blanket solution: LLMs are a tool, applied where they create genuine value, with traditional logic everywhere else.

Three decades of multi-system operational fluency. Specific tool names matter less than the meta-skill: when a new system shows up in the operation, I learn it because that's the work, not because it's a project.

When Nella Cosa transitioned in 2025, I made a deliberate choice: instead of immediately jumping into the next role, I'd go deep on the technology I believe will define the next decade. I've been building AI-powered SaaS tools, shipping iOS apps, and designing AI agent architectures — the kind of work most people only talk about at conferences.

How I Think

This is probably the part that actually matters, more than any list of technologies or job titles.

I tend to sit with problems longer than most people are comfortable with. Not because I'm slow — because the first answer is usually wrong, and the real problem is usually hiding behind the obvious one.

The SQL Server that crashed twice a day? Everyone assumed it was a hardware issue or a bad update. I spent months investigating until I traced it to corrupted characters in an unused database field — and discovered that the daily restart "fix" was actually making things worse by triggering more corruption. The real solution took an afternoon once I understood the actual problem.

The pricing model everyone assumed was optimized? I built custom queries that factored in labor costs alongside margins and discovered something counterintuitive: fewer orders at higher margins generated more total profit than chasing volume. That insight drove $1.2-2M in revenue uplift.

I don't just ask "how do we fix this?" I ask "are we even looking at the right problem?" And then I build systems that make the fix permanent — not patches that need re-patching every quarter.

That same approach applies to everything I do now. Every AI project starts with "what's the actual problem?" before I write a line of code. Every system I design considers how the pieces interact, because optimizing one component at the expense of the whole is the most expensive mistake in technology.

My Technical Philosophy

Pragmatic with a side of paranoia. I build things that work reliably, but I also assume everything will eventually break in the most inconvenient way possible — so I plan for that too.

I believe the best technology disappears into the background. If people notice the technology, something has gone wrong. My job is to make it invisible while it does the heavy lifting.

And I still believe that devices aren't hardware-limited — it's always software. Give me consumer-grade equipment and enough stubbornness and I'll make it do things the manufacturer never intended (this philosophy saved $17,000 on a single server purchase and delivered 10x the processing power at a fraction of the typical cost).

When I'm Not Debugging

I share my home office with Maggie, a retired racing greyhound who provides excellent code review through judgmental stares. She has strong opinions about my architecture decisions.

I believe the best debugging happens at live music venues (totally work-related thinking time). I garden as a reminder that not everything can be optimized with code (but I keep trying). And I'm always up for a coffee shop meeting throughout South Jersey — I know all the best spots with reliable WiFi and good coffee.

I started on an Apple SE/30. Yes, I still have one. Yes, it still works (mostly).

Currently: Building AI-powered SaaS tools, shipping iOS apps, and looking for the right full-time role where I can apply deep operational thinking to new challenges.