What made you want to do the work you do? Please share the full story.
I’ve been a creative and a problem solver for as long as I can remember — and the business world turned out to be the perfect place for both of those things to collide. From the time I was a kid, I was sketching, building, imagining things that didn’t exist yet. That instinct never left. When I started looking at businesses, I saw the same thing everywhere: companies with real potential hiding behind generic messaging, brands that couldn’t articulate what made them different, and stories that deserved to be told far better than they were.
I founded Verati Design Group because I couldn’t stop solving those problems in my head and eventually it made more sense to just do it professionally. Creativity without strategy is decoration. Strategy without creativity is a spreadsheet. I’ve always lived at the intersection, and that’s exactly where the best work happens.
Twenty years later, that’s still what gets me out of bed. Every new client is a new puzzle. Every industry is a new lens. And the satisfaction of watching something that was invisible become impossible to ignore — because we found the right idea and had the courage to actually use it — never gets old.
I didn’t choose this work. It’s just always been how I’m wired.
Tell us 3 surprisingly easy and 3 surprisingly difficult things about your job.
1. Connecting with people across industries. People assume that working across sectors — from commercial real estate to professional athletes to nonprofits — would require constantly reinventing yourself. But I’ve found that people everywhere respond to the same things: being genuinely seen, having someone who listens before they talk, and feeling like the strategy was built for them, not recycled from someone else. Connection is connection, regardless of the industry.
2. Knowing when something isn’t working. Years of creative work and strategic consulting have given me a very fast instinct for when a direction is off. I don’t always know the right answer immediately — but I almost always know quickly when we’re heading the wrong way. That saves enormous time and resources for clients and for the nonprofits I serve.
3. Getting people excited about a mission they’d never heard of before. Whether I’m chairing a luncheon or building a fundraising strategy, I’ve discovered that most people want to care about something bigger than themselves. They just need someone to open the door. I’ve never found that hard. I find it one of the most natural things I do.
1. Firing bad clients. Nobody talks about this enough. In 20 years of running Verati Design Group, I’ve learned that the wrong client — the one who doesn’t trust the process, who wants cheap and fast and brilliant simultaneously, who treats your expertise like a vending machine — costs you far more than the revenue they bring in. It costs you time, energy, and occasionally your best work. Learning to walk away from the wrong fit, gracefully and without apology, took longer than I’d like to admit. It is now a non-negotiable.
2. Getting clients to trust the uncomfortable idea. The work that will actually move the needle for a business is almost never the safe choice. It’s the direction that makes the client say “I love it — but I’m terrified.” Getting someone to lean into that feeling instead of retreating to the famili
What are the 3 things you like best about your work and why?
First, I get paid to be obsessively curious. I’ve worked with professional athletes, political campaigns, commercial real estate developers, logistics firms, architects, and fashion brands — often in the same year. Most people call that unfocused. I call it a superpower. Every new industry hands me a fresh set of assumptions to question, and I have never once been bored.
Second, the moment a brand clicks. There’s a specific look people get when the strategy and the creative finally align — when they see their business reflected back at them in a way that’s both completely true and more powerful than they imagined. It’s half recognition, half revelation. I have been chasing that look for 20 years and it never gets old.
Third, I get to be the person who makes businesses impossible to ignore. That is genuinely my job description. I wake up every day trying to ensure that no client of mine ever blends into the background of their category. If that’s not a reason to get out of bed, I don’t know what is.
What are your greatest 3 skills and how have they helped you succeed?
Seeing the real problem, not the presenting problem. Clients come to me saying “we need a new logo” or “our marketing isn’t working.” And sometimes that’s true. More often, there’s something upstream — a positioning problem, an identity crisis, a brand that’s trying to be everything to everyone and succeeding at nothing. I find that thing fast. It has saved more businesses than any logo ever could.
Making the complicated feel inevitable. Great strategy should feel obvious in hindsight. When I hand a client a brand platform or a business direction, the goal is for them to think “of course — why didn’t we see this before?” That sense of clarity, of rightness, is something I work very hard to make look effortless.
The discipline of the Grand Prix arena, applied to boardrooms. I competed at the Grand Prix level in show jumping. That world teaches you something that business school doesn’t: there is no gap between preparation and performance. The rider who wins isn’t the most talented — it’s the one who showed up with nothing left to chance. I bring that same precision to every client engagement, and it shows.
Tell us about a time where you saw a surprising outcome that you did not expect.
I once took on a client in an industry I knew almost nothing about. My strategy? Weaponize the ignorance. Instead of trying to blend in with their competitors, I approached the brand like a genuinely curious outsider — questioning everything that had been done “because that’s how it’s always been done.”
We built something that looked like nothing else in their category. Competitors thought it was strange. Customers thought it was refreshing. Within a year, the brand had stopped competing on price entirely — because when you own your identity that completely, price becomes irrelevant. What I didn’t expect was how much it changed the internal culture. When the outside world starts believing in your brand, something shifts inside the building too. That was a lesson I’ve never forgotten.
How do you get yourself out of a funk? Please share the details.
I create tangible steps that ensure I move forward through the day. When everything feels overwhelming or stuck, I don’t try to solve all of it at once — I just identify the next three things I can actually do and start there. Progress is a mood, and even small wins create it.
Exercise is always on the list. Without fail. It’s not optional for me — it’s maintenance. My brain needs it to function at the level my work demands.
And sometimes I need to create something just for me — not for a client, not for a deliverable, something that genuinely makes me happy. Whether that’s working on a piece of art in my studio or sketching out an idea with no pressure behind it, that act of creating purely for joy resets something fundamental. It reconnects me to why I love what I do in the first place.
The unsexy truth about getting out of a funk is that it’s not about waiting to feel motivated. It’s about moving anyway — and trusting that the feeling follows the action. It always does.
What do you value most and why?
Impact. Real, tangible, human impact — the kind you can actually trace back to a decision, a conversation, a moment where someone’s trajectory changed. I’ve built a business, I’ve sat in boardrooms, I’ve worked with brands that operate at every level of the market. And what I’ve learned is that none of it means much unless it’s connected to something larger than the transaction. The work that has mattered most to me — in business and beyond — is the work that changed something for someone.
Doing good is not separate from doing well. I’ve never believed in that divide. The businesses I’ve helped grow created jobs, built communities, gave people something to believe in. The causes I’ve given my time to have changed the lives of families, young people, survivors — people who deserved a chance they weren’t getting on their own.
What I value most is the belief that every interaction is an opportunity to leave someone better than you found them. In business, that means delivering work that genuinely moves the needle. In life, it means showing up with intention — for the people in your community, for causes bigger than yourself, for the version of the world you actually want to live in.
I’ve never been motivated by accumulation. I’ve always been motivated by the imprint. And I intend to keep making it.
What achievement are you the proudest of and why?
Twenty years. Two decades of Verati Design Group, built across industries as different as judicial, commercial real estate, professional sports, architecture, fashion, and logistics — without ever once defaulting to a formula.
The temptation in consulting is to find a lane, build a template, and just keep running the same play. It’s efficient. It’s comfortable. And it’s a slow death for your thinking. I made a deliberate choice never to do that. Every client got a strategy built for them, not recycled from someone else. Holding that standard for 20 years — and never losing a client to a competitor because the work wasn’t good enough — is the achievement I’ll never stop being proud of.
What is your favorite movie and why?
I’m going to give you an honest answer that will probably surprise people: I love both comedies and horror films equally, and I think that says everything you need to know about me.
Comedy because laughter is a survival skill. The ability to find something genuinely funny — even in the middle of a stressful client situation, a tough board meeting, or just a particularly chaotic week — is underrated as a life competency. I gravitate toward people and films that are genuinely witty, not just loud.
Horror because I find it fascinating that fear — when you’re safely on a couch watching it — is actually exhilarating. Horror films are really just suspense and strategy in disguise. Who’s going to make the smart decision? Who’s going to walk toward the noise? (Never walk toward the noise. This applies in business too.)
Picking one favorite is impossible and I refuse to do it. What I will tell you is that anyone who claims they only watch prestige dramas is either lying or not having nearly enough fun.
If you do charity or volunteer work, what is it and why do you do it?
I serve on the boards of the Women’s Foundation of Florida and Families First of Palm Beach County, among others. And here’s my honest answer about why: the same skills that build great brands — strategic thinking, donor cultivation, stakeholder communication, knowing how to create a room that makes people open their hearts and their wallets — are exactly what under-resourced nonprofits need most and can rarely afford to hire.
I made a decision a long time ago to stop treating my professional skills and my values as separate things. The intersection is where I do my best work. Also, it turns out that breaking fundraising records for causes that genuinely change lives is more satisfying than almost anything I’ve done in a boardroom. Don’t tell my corporate clients I said that.
Are you willing to be a mentor? If yes, what is the best way to reach you?
Yes — specifically in the nonprofit space. If you’re new to board leadership and trying to figure out how to actually add value beyond showing up to meetings, I can help. If you’re building your first major fundraising event and have no idea where to start, I can help. If you’re passionate about a cause and want to translate that passion into real strategic impact — board governance, development strategy, donor cultivation, event architecture — that’s exactly where my 15+ years of experience lives.
What I’m not is a general life coach or a networking contact. I’m someone who has done the work, broken fundraising records, and built development infrastructure for organizations across a wide range of causes. If you’re serious about creating meaningful impact in the nonprofit world, I’m genuinely interested in that conversation. You can reach me on LinkedIn. Come with a specific question. I’ll give you a real answer.
Just for fun, what is your favorite ice cream flavor?
Chocolate Bear Claw. Rich chocolate, caramel ribbons, chocolate covered almonds — it’s committed, it’s layered, and it never plays it safe. Honestly, it’s hard to go back to anything else once you’ve had it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.