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 six continents and forty countries. What gets built when the old plans no longer apply. The unexpected grace of starting over.