Writer · Architect · Developer
On surviving the unimaginable, and building what comes after.
Read the SubstackAbout
In 2013, a vessel I was aboard sank off the coast of St. Lucia. My brother Dan and I swam through the night — fourteen hours, nearly twelve miles — through shark-frequented water, past cliffs we couldn't climb, toward a shore we couldn't see. We made it. The story ran in the Guardian, BBC Radio, ABC, CNN, NBC, CBS.
What I didn't know then was that the swim was only the beginning. The harder part was building a life in its wake — figuring out what held, what needed rebuilding, and what was worth keeping.
That question has shaped everything since: twenty years designing and developing urban multifamily communities, four NAIOP development awards, and now a memoir about the night that changed the math on everything.
I write about survival — of shipwrecks, markets, and the years after loss — at my Substack, What Holds.
"Fourteen hours in open water teaches you something about structures: the ones that hold aren't always the ones that look like they should."From the memoir-in-progress, What Holds
The Writing
The 2013 St. Lucia shipwreck. The fourteen-hour swim. What it means to survive something that should have killed you — and wake up the next morning still yourself, but changed.
Twenty years building urban multifamily communities from concept to certificate of occupancy. What I know about land, capital, risk, and why the projects that matter most never look safe on paper.
Reinvention. Solo travel across thirty countries. What the architecture of a life looks like when you're mid-demolition. The unexpected grace of starting over.