From Rural Ohio to Global Impact and Back: A Builder’s Journey
I come from a rural, working-class Ohio family led by a single mother. Higher education wasn’t a given and we had no roadmap. My reality shaped a core belief: lasting solutions emerge when people own their power and have the tools to solve their own challenges. This conviction fueled two decades of complex problem-solving across Washington, D.C. and the globe. Now, I’ve returned to invest at home while remaining active abroad.
International Impact Foundation
I guided Mexican NGO PSYDEH’s transformation from a one-person operation in 2013 to a globally recognized organization: 8 remote digital resource centers, 12+ paid/volunteer Mexican/global staff (with 30 alumni), and partnerships spanning continents, achieving 19x funding and 62x total contribution growth and multiple global awards and recognition. Equally important, we pioneered frameworks positively impacting thousands of local people and helped organizations be paradigm-changing in tough funding climates: models ripe for US and global application.
Strategic Partnership Building
I built PSYDEH’s mutually beneficial partnership strategy for local stakeholders, government, and global organizations (including 3M, Adobe, GlobalGiving, Viasat, and Zoom) while developing rights-based, replicable programming in digital inclusion, leadership and economic empowerment, and democracy strengthening aligned with local demands and global goals. The Viasat-PSYDEH partnership was a key component of our shared-value ecosystem, winning a 2023 Anthem Award (Bronze), and PSYDEH was named a 2022 Adobe Creator to Watch (across the globe) in Fast Company. The organization is also recognized as a Brandi Carlile/Looking Out Foundation 2025 nonprofit of distinction and cited in impact reports like the Honnold Foundation (2024-2025), Lemonaid & ChariTea (2024), Adobe (2023), and Zoom (2021).
Resource Innovation
Diversification Strategies
Built global crowdfunding campaigns with social media influencers, social enterprise ventures, fee-for-service partnership projects (PopSockets), and digital marketing collaborations with partners (Dentsu, Lightful, Pixability). This diversified approach ensures sustainability while maintaining values integrity.
Creative Impact
Impact reporting and storytelling connecting personal to universal builds trust and drives engagement and investment. As creative and executive producer, I designed and helped to guide PSYDEH’s multimedia content and public outreach strategy.
Portfolio includes program visual media (e.g., digital inclusion video ad for tech companies), global campaign content, including this anti-othering video series, and the e-book “Narrativas / Narratives” (31 stories and 68 narrative portraits by rural and Indigenous women partners).
Additional outputs include best-in-class annual reports, white papers, ESG partnership case studies, and thought leadership on topics like accessible tech, equitable funding, community-led development, corporate appropriation, and storytelling-as-feedback tool.
Network Building
As part of PSYDEH’s outreach and creative impact strategy, I co-founded the award-winning Colectivo Cine Social, a Mexico City venture using cinema to strengthen democratic pluralism, connecting 1000+ citizens and civil society at large-scale events. Executive sponsors included Cineteca Nacional, Impact Hub CDMX, Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, and the Mexican federal Secretaría de Cultura. I also founded El Zorro Supper Club CDMX, connecting 440 professionals from 44 countries, later adapted for the Midwest USA.
USA Return
My late-2023 Ohio return builds on international experience, career pivot, and earlier DC/Cleveland roles: faith community and higher education leadership development program consultant, virtual reality startup executive, international dispute resolution lawyer-analyst, and anti-poverty community organizer.
Example Recognition
I am a 2026 Sapiens First Fellow, a 2025 Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA) Fellow, and a Tibbles Fellow with the Coleman Cultural Engagement Foundation (2018, 2025-present). I was selected for GlobalGiving’s 2020 Gates Foundation-funded Ethos (one of four global NGO leaders, the only one from Latin America), and as a 2019 TIAW World of Difference Maker (one of 6 men globally).
Education & Background
J.D. (magna cum laude), Cleveland State University College of Law; B.A. Psychology (African American Studies and Fine Arts minors), University of Mount Union. Award-winning artist and retired world-class ultimate frisbee athlete.
What’s Now
Now based in Northeast Ohio, I am applying the frameworks that transformed organizations and communities in Mexico to the USA and globally.
My portfolio includes serving as lead executive producer of a social impact documentary, Embroidering Life (Bordando Vida), and co-founding Salon Cultivar, a Northeast Ohio attention activism salon coming out of my 2025 Strother School of Radical Attention fellowship. I also co-develop the Center for Sustained Prosperity, a cross-sector framework for post-industrial inequality through ground-up “hidden economy” research, citizen-led pilots, attention-economy storytelling, and an outside-in strategy building AI-sector relationships, including as an inaugural Fall 2026 Fellow with Sapiens First.