About

I was going to be a dentist. Then I started making cold calls for a children's charity and found out I liked it far too much.

I came to the University of Georgia on a pre-dental track and spent four years studying biology. What actually redirected me was UGA Miracle. As a Rising Leader there I ran cold calls, in-person outreach, and sponsor meetings to raise money for pediatric care and research — and somewhere in the middle of it I noticed the part of the day I looked forward to was the asking. Not the science. The conversation, and whether it worked.

Three things are consistently true about how I work. I would rather find a way around a problem than stand there describing the wall — when the tool I wanted for tracking deals did not exist, I built it. I do not mind the unglamorous half of the job; most results come from doing the boring thing consistently, for longer than other people are willing to. And I like putting people in the same room. The best outcomes I have been part of came from getting the right people talking and then getting out of the way.

The biology degree was not wasted, either. Four years of being handed something complicated and told to work out how it functions transfers more cleanly than you would think. I do it now with pipelines instead of pathways.