Political/Business Bio

The Short Story

I’m an independent Washington, D.C.-based communications strategist, writer, and content specialist with 30 years of experience spanning national GOP politics, Capitol Hill, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), health policy advocacy, and corporate consulting.

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, I’ve served as communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), a Southern GOP governor, three Capitol Hill lawmakers, and numerous U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns around the country. I’ve also worked on six presidential primary or general election campaigns, and on the ground in more than a dozen states including New York, Texas, California, New Hampshire, Oregon, Louisiana, Tennessee, Minnesota, and New Jersey.

After largely phasing out campaign work by 2010 I re-oriented my consulting around the long term care and pharmaceutical sectors, later served as a senior communications advisor at HHS during the Covid pandemic, then subsequently shifted business toward biotech and private equity/venture capital-backed healthcare innovation. Long interested in live music, I’ve also served on the board of Headcount — the nonpartisan NYC-based nonprofit that’s registered nearly two million new voters at music festivals and concerts nationwide. 

I’ve appeared twice at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and served as a guest lecturer or panelist at UT Austin, LSU, Rutgers’ Eagleton Institute of Politics, Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, Pace University in New York, the National Press Club, and other Washington and state capital media forums.

My AI policy: For my business, Substacks, and all other personal content, I write all original text myself and generally edit completed work with AI to correct any typos or minor grammar issues. My writing is always based on my own ideas, concepts, and constructs.     

The Backstory — Coming to Substack in 2027

What follows below is a preview of my forthcoming 2027 Substack project — a free, serialized “travelogue” through the 1980s and ’90s tracing an unconventional, improvisational path into campaign work, Capitol Hill, and a longstanding D.C. consulting career. I’ll be detailing an entertaining but frequently turbulent ride through the early ’80s as I attempted to merge my dual passions for GOP politics and seeing live music, especially the Grateful Dead. It didn’t go smoothly, and the story is more historically interesting now than it would have been twenty years ago.  

As a George Washington University (GWU) student in early 1980, I was more interested in Ronald Reagan’s presidential candidacy than in attending class. After just several months, I left school to intern in the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) research department. The unilateral decision angered my parents, but I had my own ideas. Instead of attending class, I waited tables in Georgetown at night for cash flow, pursued an alternative education by day at the RNC, attended Capitol Hill hearings for excitement, and tried to find a way onto Reagan’s unfolding general election campaign.

Through new RNC contacts, I landed a $40-per-week “town chairman coordinator” job at Reagan/Bush ’80 headquarters in Manchester, NH. Despite the title, the job mostly entailed crisscrossing the state delivering signs and campaign paraphernalia to town and county chairs. I conveniently lived in my girlfriend’s college dorm to make ends meet.

The job was menial but formative. New Hampshire wasn’t competitive in the general election as it was during the GOP primary, but the experience set my career course and gave me useful knowledge of the nation’s first presidential primary state, its politics, and media outlets — knowledge that came in handy later.

Instead of returning to GWU after my first campaign experience to earn a diploma, I took a decidedly less conventional route — one that eventually led to Capitol Hill and my first House press secretary gig.

Getting from the Reagan campaign in 1980 to Capitol Hill in 1984 is where things got interesting.  

More to follow.