a dumb name I never replaced
I started Brain Wads in 2009 to think out loud about social media, back when "having a social media strategy" was a brand-new and slightly embarrassing idea. I never came up with a better name for the site. Honestly, that's the whole brand.
A decade-plus later it's still that: a place to think out loud, just with more range. Marketing and tech, sure. But also burnout, parenting, faith, running, and the occasional Hyrox PR attempt that ends in a virus instead.
The short version
I'm a marketer in Atlanta. These days I spend most of my time on the stuff a lot of teams are still trying to figure out: martech and CRM, demand generation, and getting AI to do actual useful work instead of writing worse emails. I speak about it around the country, which still surprises me a little. I've described myself as a "digital marketing swiss army knife," which is cornier than I'd like and also completely true.
how i got here
I ran cross country and track at Western Kentucky for four years while getting an advertising degree. (Running teaches you a lot about doing hard things that aren't always fun, a theme that keeps coming back.) Then I graduated straight into the 2009 recession and moved to Chicago to look for marketing jobs, because why not do things the hard way?
That plan went great, if you don't count the part where I waited tables at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company on Navy Pier first. Eventually I landed at Hinda Incentives, learned Salesforce and B2B marketing and how to build a social presence out of nothing, and used that to talk my way onto a social team at an agency in Atlanta. I've been here ever since.
Since then it's been a national agency, the largest faith-based PR firm in the country, a global consulting firm, and now a transatlantic AmLaw 100 law firm, where I lead a 15-person marketing team and, according to the firm's long-tenured strategy chief, "led more change in two years than he'd seen in twenty." (I keep that quote around because it's the rare nice thing said about me that doesn't surprise people who actually know me.)
real life
I live in Atlanta with my wife Megan, who also works in marketing (yes, we are a fun time at parties), and our two kids. We spend most of our time exploring the city, being let down by Atlanta sports, and getting outside as much as possible. When I'm not working or parenting, I'm probably training for a Hyrox race, writing here, or both.
That's the longer version. If you want the actual résumé, the brands, the awards, the numbers, it's all on the work page.