I grew up in New Haven, CT, which you might know as a crime-ridden pitstop between NYC and Boston with plausibly good pizza, but I know as the Greatest Small City in America. As a kid I went looking for sub-cultures: I learned Tai-Chi with Taiwanese expats in New York’s Chinatown, played guitar with a straight-edge punk band, and studied Talmud at a local rabbinical academy.

That curiosity about people took me to a Ph.D. in European cultural history, and nearly a decade as a professional detective and storyteller. I read letters, business records, and legal files in the world’s dustiest archives, piecing together how individual behavior adds up to large-scale cultural change. It was a cool gig: three years abroad, six countries, four languages, a book-length study of modern culture and identity in Germany, and some of the smartest friends I’ll ever have.

The Ivory Tower, it turns out, wasn’t a life-long fit. I wanted to see my ideas in action, working with creative people making cool things. I traded Endnote for Keynote and haven’t looked back. I’m still a detective, a storyteller, and a cultural snoop, and after a couple of great advertising and branding agencies, I went out on my own. It’s wondrous, actually.

I also serve on the boards of the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, which funds arts education for New York kids, and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, which teaches university-level humanities seminars to working adults. Turns out you can leave the Ivory Tower and still hold open the door for other people.

The guitar never went away. These days it’s folk instead of punk, and I play and sing around New York.