I grew up in a very small town in west Michigan. After two years of community college, I moved to Chicago to attend film school, relocating from a town of about three hundred people to a city of over three million. For my final semester at Columbia College, I made a similar move to Los Angeles when I was selected to participate in their highly competitive "Semester in LA" program. I then lived in the Hollywood area for the next two years, working in multiple facets of the motion picture industry, ranging from production assistant on a popular television show to professional script reader.
In 2004, one particular screenplay and the story behind it led me to southern Oregon, where I spent the next year and a half working on virtually every aspect of a low-budget documentary project of my own design, which was later accepted to several prominent film festivals around the US. I then returned to the Midwest, where I attended graduate school, earning an MA in English with an emphasis in Film and Literature from Northern Illinois University in May 2009.
That same year, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to live in Eastern Europe for a year, where I filmed and assembled footage for a documentary video about the Republic of Moldova. Upon returning to the US, I worked as an adjunct English instructor at the community college that I had once attended and as a proposal writer for the largest furniture manufacturer in the world. The executive summaries that I wrote on this company's behalf were remarkably similar to academic grant requests, and a majority of these multi-million dollar bids were successful.
Between 2011 and 2012, I worked as a full-time English instructor at the College of Micronesia. During this time, I deferred enrollment to a doctoral program at Bowling Green State University, where I would later work as a Film Studies instructor while earning my PhD in American Culture Studies with a primary concentration in Critical Studies in Media, Film and Culture and a secondary concentration in American Public Policy. I successfully defended my dissertation in December 2016 and officially earned my doctorate in May 2017.
In 2004, one particular screenplay and the story behind it led me to southern Oregon, where I spent the next year and a half working on virtually every aspect of a low-budget documentary project of my own design, which was later accepted to several prominent film festivals around the US. I then returned to the Midwest, where I attended graduate school, earning an MA in English with an emphasis in Film and Literature from Northern Illinois University in May 2009.
That same year, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to live in Eastern Europe for a year, where I filmed and assembled footage for a documentary video about the Republic of Moldova. Upon returning to the US, I worked as an adjunct English instructor at the community college that I had once attended and as a proposal writer for the largest furniture manufacturer in the world. The executive summaries that I wrote on this company's behalf were remarkably similar to academic grant requests, and a majority of these multi-million dollar bids were successful.
Between 2011 and 2012, I worked as a full-time English instructor at the College of Micronesia. During this time, I deferred enrollment to a doctoral program at Bowling Green State University, where I would later work as a Film Studies instructor while earning my PhD in American Culture Studies with a primary concentration in Critical Studies in Media, Film and Culture and a secondary concentration in American Public Policy. I successfully defended my dissertation in December 2016 and officially earned my doctorate in May 2017.
My first book, Film Comedy and the American Dream, is an original, peer-reviewed monograph based on my dissertation that was published by Routledge as part of their "Advances in Film Studies" series. I was interviewed about my work for the New Books Network podcast. In my book, I explore the multifaceted and dynamic relationships between comedy, cinema and culture from the end of the Second World War through the 2016 presidential election.
Since publishing my book/dissertation in 2017, I have written four feature-length screenplays in a variety of genres, as well as six full-length albums (65 songs) of original music on which I play every instrument. Last year, I also completed a polished draft of an original literary novel and began work on another, and prior to the pandemic, I taught 3-4 undergraduate courses per term as an English instructor at a community college in Ohio, while also tutoring students one-on-one in their writing center. I presently teach English and Humanities at a community college in Colorado.
I enjoy writing, playing/recording music, riding my bike, photography, cooking, baking, playing Scrabble, hiking, camping, and traveling/going on adventures. I am very good at working on computers (PCs and Macs, hardware and software) and I am highly adept at using Final Cut Pro, Premiere, Photoshop, Garageband, Logic, Sonar and ProTools, as well as most other audio and video engineering programs.
Whenever I can afford the time, I am constantly expanding my creative portfolio, which presently includes over a dozen feature-length screenplays, ranging from broad comedy to historical biopic and including just about everything in between. I have directed about twenty short films and one feature film, and I have composed, recorded and produced over a hundred songs. I have also written and performed stand-up comedy sets on multiple occasions and in very different venues. I am a creative problem-solver who is hardworking, honest and dedicated to the promotion of a greater good. I am exceptionally proficient at learning how to do new things, and I am constantly challenging myself to do precisely that.