It’s the many obvious, simple, little changes that together give us massive progress.

From foreign exchange network construction to B2B telehealth, international social enterprise, and unique commercial real estate redevelopment strategies, I’ve applied a four-step philosophy to every challenge I’ve encountered:

Ignore the norm.
Find the core problem.
Rethink the most fundamental challenge.
Amplify the impact through partnerships.

Everyone has a unique story to tell, here’s how things started for me:

Three decades ago, I watched the sun rise wondering what my next step would be after having everything in my possession stolen during a morning surf trip. An anonymous, penniless student on a beach in Ecuador with no ID and no way home,

I spent the next 24 hours finding work as a waiter and less than a week later, I was in a suit and tie running international sales at a fin-tech start-up Datatec, S.A. With a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Oregon and 90 days of Spanish tutoring, I went on to open offices for the company in Bogotá, Colombia, and Santiago, Chile.

Returning stateside in 2001, I dove deep into real estate while living in Miami, learning the ropes in leadership positions with American Invesco and Newmark Knight Frank.

While at Newmark, a few friends and I formed Alterra Capital Group — my first business venture. Through Alterra, we raised money and bought hundreds of apartments at a time, in an effort to help reduce workforce housing shortages in the US. At Alterra we directly acquired and redeveloped over 3800 housing units worth over one hundred and fifty million dollars.

It was during this time that I saw the desperate need for micro capital in the small business world, which sparked my second co-founded venture: EverGift. To date, we’ve accelerated the flow of capital to social enterprises that design innovative, market-based solutions to break the cycle of poverty worldwide with over 4,000 microloans circulating throughout 84 countries.

Newly married and fully invested in getting EverGift off the ground, my wife and I moved from Miami to New York City, where I began my MBA at NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2010. Over the next 10 years I learned how to invest in dozens of small promising companies where my real world experience allowed me to create actual value.

In 2015 I co-founded Carie Health, where my team and I are worked to reinvent the way doctors see patients in the U.S. The Carie Health platform allowed doctors and patients to connect directly online in a HIPPA compliant solution connected to major insurance providers and the nations pharmacy networks.

In 2020 as the Covid pandemic set in the solution was no longer perceived as an academic nicety and was acquired by a US public corporation in need of the very solution we had mapped out five years prior.

In everything I’ve done and everything I find worth doing, I’ve learned a few things to be universally true:

1. It doesn’t matter how great an idea you have — if it doesn’t help people, it won’t win.
2. I’m only as good as the people around me. When I get a lot done, it’s because I’ve got a team of great people behind me who really get it.
3. To make real change, you have to be ready to question everything — and you have to be able to translate early passion into long term action.