Born in Caracas. Raised in Queens. Vibing in LA.
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. My family came to the United States when I was three. I became a citizen at thirteen. My family worked hard to build something here. Cleaning houses, working restaurants, making an honest living.
In college I worked in a warehouse. Hard, unglamorous manual labor. Early mornings, heavy loads, the kind of work you feel in your body at the end of the day. What stayed with me wasn't the work. It was who showed up to do it.
I learned early that the right two or three people, working without backup, can move mountains. Making something happen with no resources is not that different from making something happen with a great team and real stakes. You find the people who know how. You get to work. You figure it out.
I started as a graphic designer. Print, editorial, early web. The New Yorker, Wired, Men's Vogue. I learned what it means to have standards. Then I moved into products. MakerBot, Reserve, ClassPass, Google. I learned that the hardest design problems were not visual problems. They were systems problems, organizational problems, and decision problems. That realization is what eventually pulled me toward building organizations and better products.
I have always loved making things. Letterpress prints. Furniture. 3D printed figures that end up in someone's hands. A physical object is honest in a way that a deck is not. You either made it or you didn't.
At Disney I built something. A design organization of nearly 50 people leading core product experiences across Disney+ and Hulu.
Before Disney, I taught full-time at General Assembly. Ten-week immersive UX programs, five days a week. It forced me off the product and onto the person. I learned that teaching is not about talking. It is about creating the conditions where someone else can grow. That shifted how I think about management. The job is not to build empires. It is to build people. Some of my best hires came from that classroom.
The work I find most interesting is not the interfaces we ship. It is the conditions that allow us to ship better interfaces, repeatedly, over time. Hiring the right people. Building the right culture. Making sure everyone has the information they need to make good decisions.
I care about people. Not as a talking point. As a practice. Sometimes that looks like a barbecue. Sometimes it looks like a conversation nobody wants to have. The point is never the gesture. The point is that people know they are valued.
I live in LA with my wife Mindy, my kids Ryder and Keirin, and our dog Moon. New York still has my heart. I am not going soft. I am just working on not calling 58 degrees a cold front.
How I lead
For this role, for the next one, for whatever comes after that. Most organizations treat people as resources. I think about the person in front of me: what they are trying to build, where they want to go, what is in the way.
I have their back whatever they choose to do. If they grow and move on, that is a win. If the work here is good enough that they stay, that is also a win. I am not trying to retain people. I am trying to make them better.
They grow from being trusted, challenged, and given real ownership. That is what I learned from teaching adults who were reinventing themselves. It changed how I run a team.
How I work
Most solutions fail because the problem was never properly understood. I spend more time asking questions than proposing answers.
Faster decisions are not better decisions. Clearer thinking is. The quality of decisions determines the quality of outcomes.
That includes the work that doesn't show up on a resume. The late nights, the hard conversations, the hand-signed cards.
HR has a script. I deliver that, then I tell you what I actually think.
This is the way