About Me

My Personal Story

I am an explorer at heart.

Ever since I was young I loved learning new things, traveling to new countries, and trying new food. I have my parents to thank for giving me a rich childhood full of adventure, choice and opportunity.

At a young age I learned how to speak four languages and was fortunate enough to travel around the world - not because my family was rich, but because my parents (especially my dad) had an unrelenting love for travel.

As a youth I loved sports - baseball, hockey and golf, playing video games, and spending time with my family. My first jobs were as a dish cleaner at a buffet, a meat slicer at a deli, and a cook at a pizzeria.

I didn’t have grand visions for my life and career, but studied hard and graduated both high school and university a year early. Partially because I enjoyed learning and the game of academic achievement. I ended up studying business in university because I was pretty good at math and loved trading stocks in high school.

I landed my first corporate job as an auditor at PwC. I didn’t love accounting work, but I really liked the culture at PwC, the opportunity to learn about big businesses, and the Big Four firms were hiring a lot of new grads post-Enron.

Two years into my time as an auditor I was ready to leave since the work wasn’t for me, but I still wanted to earn my Chartered Accountant designation which required me to be at a Big Four accounting for at least another year. I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to join Deloitte as a strategy consultant and I did that for another 18 months before quitting.

I was still exploring - about what I wanted to do with my life.

At the age of 25, I left my corporate job, moved out of my condo that I owned, and left my hometown of Toronto to work for a non-profit organization started by Bill Clinton. What started out as a 3-month experiment as an unpaid intern led to a 3-year career in the non-profit world that gave me the opportunity to live and work in Africa. I loved living in Tanzania and eventually moved to the organization’s headquarters in New York. Those were transformative years in my life where I figured out what was important to me and also gained a better perspective on the world.

Despite the nobility of the non-profit industry and the inspiring and bright people I worked with, I didn’t see myself working in it for the rest of my career. Part of me was frustrated by the slow pace of things, and part of me felt like there was something else out there for me.

I did my MBA in London to take a sabbatical from work, figure out what was next in my career, and also take a risk on a new budding relationship with a woman who I ended up marrying. My time in Europe was short but special - I got engaged, made some good friends, travelled a lot, and got a master’s degree.

My fiancé, now wife, and I wanted to be closer to home and she had an opportunity to transfer jobs to New York so we moved there where we would eventually spend five amazing years.

When we moved to New York I was unemployed and was worried about my prospects since I needed a company to sponsor my work visa. Over the span of three months I applied for 50+ jobs, got 7 interviews, and ended up with 3 job offers. One of those offers was to join Google to which I immediately said “yes”. I had interned there in London and knew it was a special place to work where I could grow a lot as a person and professional.

My time in New York was memorable because my wife and I had some very close friends from back home who lived there, we loved our jobs, we loved exploring the city, and our children were born there. So it was bittersweet when we left New York to move back home in 2018, but we always knew we wanted to go back home to Toronto.

We lived abroad for 10 years, had our fair share of adventure, and achieved a lot of personal and career goals. It was time to start a new chapter which focused on building a strong foundation for our family and investing in our kids. It takes a village to raise a family, and we finally came back to ours.

Exploration has meant different things to me in different times of my life.

Right now, I’m spending a lot of time exploring the question of how I can best support my family, how to best use my career as a platform for meaningful impact, and how to best contribute to my community.

The exploration continues...

If you are looking for my professional bio you can download it here.