I'm a career technologist, entrepreneur, lawyer, maker, and Marketing Engineer.
My superpower is curiosity. I like to play with new technology to learn how it works, and how it will impact the world. My obsessions are process, performance, building stuff, and telling stories. And, of course, the intersection of these things with technology.
At 14 my friends and I taught ourselves HTML between classes. At 16 I launched a web design company. We had a hell of a website, and zero clients. Over time, this merged with cameras, photography, and filmmaking and business as I sold epic sports photos to little league and swim team parents.
Speaking of swimming, I've spent a lot of time underwater. Through the lens of sport I spent a lot of time focused on flow, performance, motivation, teamwork, coaching, and greatness. I trained at North Baltimore Aquatic Club alongside Michael Phelps and other Olympians. I was an All-ACC and All-American swimmer at University of Virginia (more Olympians), and a competitor at 2004 Olympic Trials (literally all of the US Olympians). Along the way I also won some awards for leadership and hard work.
After college, in 2006, I dropped out of a filmmaking MFA program at CalArts to start my first production company, OneStep Productions. Since then I've founded, launched, and sustained multiple companies at the frontier of digital technology: a couple marketing companies, one legaltech company, and a mental health startup. I’ve also served as a marketing executive at NetWise (acquired by Dun & Bradstreet) and Mission Control AI.
I was an early explorer of the capacity for data-driven marketing strategy enabled by modern digital platforms and coined the phrase “Marketing Engineer” for the operatives focused on the practice. I created the world’s first “trans-media” web series, was an early player in the first wave of streaming video and have racked up tens of millions of views for clients and companies. I've also won a few hackathons and pitch competitions along the way.
During a burnout cycle, I decided to change it up and get a JD. In law school I did a lot of writing about about how we can use the communication dynamics of the Open Source movement, and tools like Git, Github, Stack Overflow and Reddit to improve public engagement with government and law. This then lead to research on blockchains, smart contracts. My work in this field resulted in my membership in some awesome decentralized organizations like LexDAO and Raid Guild.
My legal track was technology, intellectual property, and entertainment law. I won a CALI Award for Mass Media and worked for the prestigious Biederman Entertainment Law Clinic. After school I wrote a white paper about blockchain dispute resolution, raised some funding, and founded the aforementioned LegalTech company, Juris. There, we ended up focused on building technology to improve access to justice.
Currently I am teaching Entrepreneurship as well as Generative AI at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce. My research focus is on business process automation and Generative AI in business, media, and content production. When I'm not teaching, or learning new stuff, I'm making content. Sign up for my Marketing Machine newsletter if you want to consume learnings as we publish.
In my free time I hang out with my wife and three boys, talk about nerdy stuff via podcast, take pictures, make things out of wood, and try to stay in shape enough to pop off a 50 freestyle if I'm ever challenged.
Dig around on the rest of this site to learn more about me, or check out some of the stuff I've made over the years.
✌️ Kerp