It looks like six careers. It was one decision, made repeatedly.
Every role, organization and volunteer commitment in one place — from a teenage facilitator in 1991 to Premier League match days in 2025. Read the first line of each entry, then read the last one.
1991 – 2001
Before it was a career, it was already the job.
Live events, broadcast and audiences — a decade before anyone would have called it marketing.
Indiana Teen Institute
Peer leadership and facilitation, beginning in high school and continuing through college. Running programs, training facilitators, and learning early that a room full of people is a system you can design for.
University Program Board · Ball State University
Booked and produced live campus entertainment, including Adam Sandler and The Last Blast. First real lesson in what it costs to put a crowd in a room and send them home happy.
WCRD · Ball State college radio
On air, and host of the WCRD B91 Bash. Broadcast production alongside live event production, at the same time.
ABC Sports · Production Assistant
Worked both the Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard 400 in the same year — inside the broadcast operation of the largest single-day spectator sporting event in the world. Twenty-eight years later, IMS is still down the road. See the media work →
Zeta Beta Tau · Zeta Phi Chapter
Helped start the chapter from scratch and served as its president. Returned as chapter advisor for several years after graduating — the first time I built something and then handed it to someone else to run.
Maverick Records · Midwest promotional lead
Regional promotion for a major label at the tail end of the era when radio still made records break. The music business taught me how fandom actually forms — a lesson that outlasted the industry that taught it.
Tour Design · audio department
Interned two summers, then joined full time — my first job out of college.
2000 – 2001
One job set up everything that followed.
I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew I liked going places.
Ambassadair was the largest private travel club in the country. I took passengers on trips around the world — opening my mind to new cultures and helping others turn a holiday into something more rewarding.
Three things started there, and all three became careers. Beverages: I always tried the local product, country by country. Soccer: I played pickup everywhere I went, usually with resort staff — experiencing the game from inside other people's cultures is what fueled the love of it. The three-tier system: an incentive trip with Miller Brewing introduced me to how supplier and distribution actually work.
Every industry I later entered "without background" traces to a job I took because I liked traveling
2001 – 2010
Learning the trade, one category at a time.
Monarch Beverage · on-premise sales
Bars, restaurants and accounts. Learning how product actually moves in the real world.
Miller Brewing Company · off-premise
Retail and grocery. The other half of the three-tier picture.
Starbucks Coffee Company · Business Development Director, Foodservice
Indiana and Kentucky. Learned the category, built the accounts, became a Coffee Master, then mentored twenty partners through the same certification.
100% · 138% · 108% to fiscal plan, three consecutive years
2005
The job I was worst suited to.
I left beer to sell something that wasn't a commodity.
It lasted under a year. I was not good at it, and I have never regretted taking it — because failing at something teaches you what you actually want in a way that succeeding never does.
Two conclusions came out of it, and they shaped every decision I have made since. First: I get far more from working on something I genuinely love and appreciate than from the pursuit of wealth. Second: training and development matter more inside a company than almost anything else on the org chart — because a company that teaches its people compounds, and one that doesn't just churns them.
Those two conclusions are why Starbucks appealed a year later, why I built the Academy of Spirits, and why the national onboarding program existed at all. A short, unglamorous job produced the thesis for the next twenty years.
Shaped what I wanted from a company, from my own development, and from culture
2010 – 2018
"I didn't drink."
Not by accident. My father was an alcoholic, so where other people experimented in their teens, I didn't touch it until I was 21. Then I joined a spirits distributor.
Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits
Trade Development & Brand Director, Key Account Manager and more — managing a $30M+ portfolio across Bacardi USA, Heaven Hill and Patrón, with category management for CVS Caremark and Meijer Corporate built on Nielsen, IRI and POS data.
Founded the Academy of Spirits & Fine Service, a 12-week program that became a hiring prerequisite at Indianapolis cocktail bars, then the Advanced Academy — which took beverage professionals to Scotland for single malt, Jamaica for Appleton Rum, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, Cognac with the BNIC and Paris with Pernod Ricard — and the USBG Indiana chapter. Designed the national onboarding program adopted across 48 states, and was certified to teach Achieve Global and Wilson Learning curricula company-wide: Behavioral Interviewing, Real Time Coaching, Core Management Skills, Core Selling Skills and Meetings Under Control. Hosted two Area Manager Summits a year and led the 2015 Executive Retreat supporting the "OneSouthern" initiative. See the certifications →
Golden Bar winner · Diageo World Class regional judge · Trade Development Director of the Year nominee
Indiana Wesleyan University
Master of Business Administration.
Enthuse Marketing · Regional Director
Directed 25 brand consultants across 11 North American markets for Diageo Reserve's luxury portfolio, delivering measurable dollar and share growth in every market. See the beverage work →
2011 – 2022
Supporter first. Executive second.
Brickyard Battalion · 501(c)3
Founded with five other people around a team that had not played a match. Grew it past 5,000 registered supporters, incorporated it as a non-profit, and testified at the Indiana Statehouse for the stadium. Indy Eleven's first match: 12 April 2014. Six people to five thousand →
Covered by The Guardian, the Indy Star and Urban Pitch
Brickyard Battalion · President
Four years leading the organization, all while working full time and raising a young family.
Indy Eleven · Vice President, Marketing & Strategy
Joined several seasons in to rebuild a marketing function that wasn't working. Marketing in direct support of sales, a youth pipeline, an owned radio footprint, and the club's first real measurement discipline.
The XI Century Club · The comp ticket problem · We were only measuring 6% · Racing Indy Night · A Grateful Evening · Back Home Again · The app rebuild · Nivel De Cancha · The archive · Victory Is Ours · Youth soccer · The rivalry · Iron Maiden
Paid share 63.6% → 91.2% · comps −73.4% · club attendance record 182,457 · full-season units +109% · new season-ticket acquisition +329% · merchandise per attendee +144% · stadium revenue $3.26M · media verification 6% → 63% · USL Marketing Executive of the Year 2021 · Communications Team of the Year 2020
2022 – present
Making the numbers trustworthy first.
Pumpjack Dataworks · Client Success & Experience Director
"I'm not an engineer." Made a sophisticated fan-data platform legible to the most demanding sports organizations in the world — building data strategy, governance, onboarding and commercial use-case frameworks. The company was acquired during my tenure. See the data work →
Real Madrid · The Masters · Inter Miami CF · FC Dallas · Major League Rugby · Major League Cricket · Dubai Moonlight Classic
West Fork Whiskey Co. · Marketing & Data Consultant
Rebuilt go-to-market across three brands — brand architecture, first-party data, lifecycle marketing and the Whsky Clb community. Net sales grew $111,556 while guest count stayed flat at 46,716 to 46,720. Read the recommendation →
AOV +14.2% · events +293.8% · cost per purchase −66.8% on 30.8% less spend · website purchase rate per session +51.7% · CPC −44.73% · organic traffic +40% · B2B audience velocity +162.7%
Frissonomics LLC · Founder & Principal Consultant
An independent commercial strategy practice. Retained to diagnose commercial problems, build business cases, model opportunities and produce executive decision materials — then stay accountable for outcomes.
KM&A · Business Development Director
Generated $300K in new agency revenue in under a year through pipeline development, competitive benchmarking and executive pitch work. The agency closed in May 2025.
Premier League Summer Series · via Relevent Sports
Built the consolidated commercial review across four Premier League clubs, three NFL stadiums and Ticketmaster — establishing canonical KPI definitions and resolving a conflict between two internal attribution narratives that materially changed investment conclusions. Read the recommendation →
Delivered a 14-section consolidated review with a metric dictionary, duplicate and source-of-truth map, eleven prioritized data-quality findings with assigned owners, and ten evidence-linked recommendations for the following season.
$16.77M event transaction revenue · 127,655 fans across three NFL stadiums · blended ROAS 9.79x · Premium Email 24.76x · registration 104.7% and ticket conversion 258.8% of target
The Snow League · customer experience consultant
Roughly six months building the customer experience foundation as a new action-sports property came to life — the sixth industry entered without prior background, and the same sequence as the five before it.
Things that did not exist until they did.
- XI Century Club — first fully integrated fan loyalty app in world football
- Brickyard Battalion — a supporters group organized before the club
- Academy of Spirits & Fine Service — and the Advanced Academy
- USBG Indiana chapter — now one of the country's largest
- WCRD B91 Bash — hosted on the Ball State college station
- Nivel De Cancha — Spanish-language soccer radio, built from scratch
- The Eleven Q — app-driven match-day game show
- SGWS national onboarding — deployed across 48 states
- Among the first professional sports teams in the U.S. to host in-person fans during the pandemic
- Zeta Beta Tau, Zeta Phi — chapter started from scratch
What the industries gave back.
Your industry is next.
The category changes. The sequence doesn't: learn the customer, build the system, earn the credential.
