Dragon's Tooth Peak · Appalachian Trail · Virginia
I grew up in the foothills and mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, hiking with friends on weekends and cooking for anyone who would sit still long enough to eat.
Dragon's Tooth Peak was a favorite in my undergraduate days at Virginia Tech. It's part of a challenging stretch of the Appalachian Trail in Southwest Virginia — about four miles round-trip from the parking lot, with a scramble at the top that earns the view. I hiked it first with friends, then with Robin, who is now my wife. It was one of the first hikes we did together in college.
What I love about Dragon's Tooth isn't its height. It's the perspective. From the top, you can see the ridgeline and the valley floor at the same time — the big picture and the ground truth, simultaneously. That's the elevation I try to bring to every engagement.
When it came time to name the consultancy, there was never really another option.
Dragon's Tooth Peak · Appalachian Trail · Virginia
I came to Coca-Cola with two graduate degrees — an MBA from the University of Richmond and an MS from VCU Brandcenter — and found myself in rooms with people who had forgotten more about brand marketing than most people ever learn. It was the right place at the right time, and I tried to make the most of it.
I co-founded an internal innovation squad, helped build the insights case for a global campaign that went on to win Cannes Lions recognition, and co-conceived an innovation platform that we pitched to CEO Muhtar Kent alongside a team — and that is still running more than a decade later.
From there I moved into agency strategy work, doing consumer research and brand strategy for clients across financial services, entertainment, and hospitality. Then to Allianz, where I led co-branded campaign strategy for major U.S. travel partners and contributed to a record year in travel insurance sales.
In 2018 I started Dragon's Tooth. The work since then has ranged from fractional CMO engagements to national campaign briefs to consumer insights research with luxury hotel brands. The through-line across all of it is the same belief I've held since those early days at Coca-Cola: the best marketing earns its place by being genuinely relevant to how people actually live.
Cooking for people and marketing to people turn out to require the same fundamental skill: paying close enough attention to know what someone might love before they ask for it. On the trail, they call this trail magic. In high-end hospitality, they call these moments wow stories — the kind that guests retell for years.
I've been thinking about hospitality as a discipline for most of my adult life — from growing up glued to cooking shows, to reading Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality, to the way The Bear captures what it actually feels like to care that much about the work.
That's also why I started Dragon's Tooth Bakery — a small-batch cookie operation I run out of a commercial kitchen in Richmond. It's the same impulse, just expressed in chocolate and raspberry.
I've lived in Richmond since graduate school at VCU Brandcenter. Richmond stuck. It's a city that rewards curiosity — good food, genuine community, and enough creative energy to keep things interesting.
I'm an active Toastmasters leader and a certified I Am Tourism Ambassador through the Richmond Region Tourism Foundation, trained on regional tourism assets and the economic impact of hospitality on the communities around us. I take the city seriously as a place worth knowing.
The best client relationships I've had started with someone who had a problem they couldn't quite name yet — and trusted that a conversation would help. If that sounds familiar, let's talk.