About Me

I’m energized by how places shape people, and how people shape places. My background is in psychology, which means I’ve always been curious about what drives behavior. I can’t help but think about neighborhoods as living, breathing personalities. Why does one block feel like home and the next feels like such a drag? How does a restaurant become the heartbeat of a street?

I started out in clinical research at UCLA before detouring into commercial real estate, where I’ve spent the last 8 years helping concepts find their footing. Restaurants have always been my favorite lens - I believe food is the fastest way to tap into a neighborhood’s soul - but what I really love thinking about is the psychology of place. What a street craves, what it resists, and how the right idea in the right space can flip the energy of a whole neighborhood.

I also write. I co-authored Counter Surfers, a Venice Beach restaurant guide starring my dog Penny Lane and my co-author’s dog, Norman. It’s part coffee table book, part love letter to Venice, part shrine to two very photogenic pups. I’m also building Merriment Collective, an event series that experiments with how people gather (sometimes intimate, sometimes chaotic, always intentional).

Venice is home base, but my life is bigger than one zip code. My work lives at the intersection of psychology, place, and culture - asking not just “what’s opening where”, but “why here, why now, and who will it matter to?”