Creative Director · Brand Storytelling · Film
I create brand films that play like documentary, not like advertising.
Director and cinematographer. I still hold the craft bar myself.
Brand and documentary work across more than 40 countries.
Stood up an in-house studio that ships 1,500+ films a year.
Three things I hold to.
From maker to leader, without leaving the craft.
I came up as a director and DP, most recently shooting the feature Brooklyn, Minnesota with Amy Madigan. I moved into creative leadership, but I never handed off the craft. I still own treatments, direct the hard scenes, and hold the cut to a real standard. The leadership works because the work is still mine.
Build something that outlasts me.
A great film is a moment. A repeatable way of finding and telling them is an engine. I build the playbooks, the brief templates, and the story-casting approach that let a team make strong work without me in the room, then I put my hands on the ones that matter most.
Move people, honestly.
The real story always beats the staged one. I find the honest, human moment, the actual person and the thing they actually care about, and I will not manufacture feeling. I have done this inside heavily scrutinized, regulated industries, which is its own discipline: true, on the record, and still able to move you.
A few pieces. Every one is a real person and a real story, found and then told well.
The record behind the work.
I run the creative for Tilt Studios, the in-house video studio at UnitedHealth Group. I stepped into a team that had no creative leadership, set the standard, and grew it from 8 to 13: videographers, editors, motion designers. We ship more than 1,500 films a year, and we raised the craft to the point that work we used to send to outside production companies, we now make ourselves, saving an estimated $375,000 a year in directing fees alone.
Before that I co-founded Rikshaw Films and built brand storytelling for Fortune 500 clients including UnitedHealthcare, Optum, Target, and General Mills, owning the work from first idea through final delivery, across productions in more than 40 countries. I co-founded HealthTales, a company devoted entirely to character-led healthcare storytelling, for Mayo Clinic, Optum, and Prime Therapeutics.
My foundation is the camera. I shot documentary on location in 40+ countries for Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, and most recently shot the award-winning feature Brooklyn, Minnesota as director of photography. That craft is what lets me lead other makers credibly, and it is why I still pick up the camera when the story calls for it.