Before the web was the work.

My first career was operations. Through the 2010s I managed a $6M-a-year pharmacy, then directed marketing and operations for three New York City restaurants — including locations inside Grand Central Terminal — each doing about $3M annually. That era taught me everything no bootcamp covers: customer service under pressure, tight margins, and how a simple loyalty program can grow an email list from five thousand to seventy-five hundred.

When the world locked down in March 2020, I went back to school on my own terms: a JavaScript bootcamp at Tech Talent South in Charlotte, then certification after certification — HTML, CSS, SASS, responsive design — stacked on top of a business degree from SUNY Farmingdale (3.9, cum laude). The hobby I’d kept since 2001 became the career.

These days the operations brain and the builder brain work together. The studio designs and manages websites for small businesses; the essays document what twenty-five years of small improvements add up to.