About
I've spent two decades building AI systems, traveling the world, and trying to understand how technology can serve human curiosity rather than exploit it.
Today I work independently - building tools, writing essays, and exploring questions about how we learn, travel, and pay attention in a world full of noise.
Early Curiosity
I grew up in New Jersey with an early love of books, computers, and wondering how things worked. My father was a musician who spent his evenings re-composing Genesis songs in MIDI. My own interests ranged from programming to literature to the outdoors. After college, I spent more than two years traveling around the world, which became the foundation for much of what followed.
In 2004, I co-founded Roadjunky, a travel website, with a friend I met in Panama.
Academic Foundation
I earned a master's from Rutgers, working on speech processing and microphone arrays in Jim Flanagan's lab. Then I moved to UC Santa Barbara for a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering, funded by an NSF interdisciplinary fellowship. My research focused on content-based image retrieval - a mix of computer vision, machine learning, and search. Along the way I worked on augmented reality, video summarization, and interfaces for live music performance.
Industry Years
After my Ph.D., I spent over a decade building AI-powered products at scale. At Microsoft I worked on Bing's search quality and spell checking. At Facebook I spent five years on search, ads ranking, and then led a team fighting misinformation. At Stripe I worked on Radar, the fraud detection system. At Supernormal, I led AI as head of the team.
Through all of these, the thread was the same: applying research to real-world problems that affect millions of people.
Independent Builder
In 2019, I took a sabbatical and moved my family to Bali. We lived on a rice field in Ubud and explored Southeast Asia with our two young daughters. That year changed how I thought about work and life.
Today I'm the founder of Infeather, a creative studio for human-first AI tools. My current focus is World Tree, an AI travel app designed to bring depth and meaning to exploration through local voices and storytelling.
I write essays, read widely, compose electronic music, and try to live deliberately. I'm interested in the places where technology, culture, and human experience overlap.
I'm available for limited consulting, advising, and mentorship. Reach out via LinkedIn.