I juggle a lot of things. (Objects included.) I'm a career technologist. I'm an entrepreneur, a lawyer, a maker, a marketer, and a professor at the University of Virginia.
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 patterns, 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 a love of cameras, photography, filmmaking and business as I sold epic sports photos to little league and swim team parents.
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 also served as a marketing executive at NetWise (acquired by Dun & Bradstreet) and Mission Control AI.
During a burnout cycle 2012-ish, I decided to change it up, so I went to law school and graduated with a JD in 2016. There I did a lot of writing 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 led to research on blockchains and 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. We built technology to improve access to justice.
Currently I am teaching Entrepreneurship, Information Systems, Generative AI, and sometimes Marketing at the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce. I also serve as the Assistant Director of Student Entrepreneurship. When Im not teaching I've been exploring Generative AI in coding, product, business, media, and content production.
When I'm not teaching, or learning new stuff, I'm making content about what I’ve learned. You can likely find links wherever you’re reading this.
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 50m freestyle if I'm ever challenged.
Dig around on the rest of this site to check out some of the stuff I've made over the years.
🚀 Kerp