I got my start as a layout artist at a local newspaper on Long Island, New York. Without a clue as to what I was doing, I bent the truth to get my foot in the door. Once inside I learned quickly and believed I could make a career out of it. It was when I first realized that with focus and determination, anything was going to be possible.

 

Print was fun. I enjoyed the process and soon fell in love with my first piece of machinery, the Heidelberg Press. As my skills improved, I found myself moving from newspaper ads to colorful magazine spreads. I imagined myself working as a graphic artist at some ad agency one day. This all changed however the moment I discovered the web. It was during the dot-com boom that I had the opportunity to join AdClip Networks—a tech-startup in Silicon Alley. This experience opened my eyes to so many things I did not know were possible. I learned to think big. And in retrospect, the most important lesson learned was how to fail.

 

Soon after the market crashed, we found ourselves packing up and shutting our doors. Lower Manhattan became a ghost-town. I made my way up to Madison Avenue where I broadened my skills at the ad agency Mezzina Brown & Partners. In 2006, I joined the award-winning digital agency, R/GA, where I worked for three amazing years.

 

Being Disruptive

 

It's exciting to see tech rise again in New York. Now with more experience under my belt, I've kicked off some of my own initiatives which I plan to launch in the near future.

 

I've participated and placed in a number of hackathons including TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in 2013. My team and I were featured on TechCrunch.com for our work, "Leap and Time", which used Leap Motion's controller to navigate through a Facebook timeline via hand gestures.