I’m a sucker for stories that hold the ruin and the renewal, the wound and the wisdom, the ache and the ascent.

That’s what first drew me to counseling years ago, and it’s what grounds my work as a ghostwriter now. I’m most at home where emotional honesty meets intellectual depth, helping clients tell stories that resonate on the page and stand up to the scrutiny of smart, skeptical readers. Whether it’s a big idea or a personal journey, I help shape it with structure, substance, and soul.

I hold a PhD in Educational Psychology, which is the study of how people learn, grow, and change; my research focused on motivation and self-compassion. My background in counseling gave me a front-row seat to that process, helping people work through hard seasons and come out the other side. Now, as a ghostwriter, I bring both perspectives to the page: the researcher’s eye for evidence and the counselor’s instinct for story, honesty, and human connection.

Without knowing it at the time, that training set the tone for the kind of writing I do now. I’ve worked on books with a range of voices, from entrepreneurs, media personalities, and mental health clinicians to a university president and a former presidential advisor. No matter the topic, I’m drawn to books that wrestle with big questions and serve a deeper purpose—one that stirs reflection, growth, or change.

In many ways, the kinds of books I help shape today are a continuation of the intellectual and personal questions that first drew me to academic life.

I started my PhD thinking I’d become a professor. For six years at UT Austin, I taught, researched, and wrote alongside brilliant people. But somewhere along the way, it began to dawn on me that the academic path wasn’t the right fit. I craved more creative freedom, more room to move between disciplines, and a chance to write in a voice that felt more like my own. When I finished my program, I wasn’t sure what came next. I gave walking tours of Nashville and became, briefly, the most overqualified bellman at the Opryland Hotel. Those jobs didn’t come with prestige, but they gave me something better: time to think.

And in that space, I remembered what a professor said to me after my dissertation defense: “I know you’re going to do special things.” I asked her what made her say that. She smiled and said, “Because you can write.” At the time, I didn’t know how much those words would shape my path. But she was right. Ghostwriting turned out to be the unexpected answer to a question I hadn’t learned how to ask.

Home is Nashville, where I live with my fiancée, Amy, and my teenage son, Dub. I start most mornings with a smoothie and a stack of dog-eared nonfiction. I read with a pencil in hand, underlining, circling, and scribbling notes in the margins, always on the hunt for the one idea that makes everything click. Then it’s on to the workday: writing, revising, and digging through research to find the studies that give shape and backbone to my clients’ instincts. I spend the rest of my time climbing rocks, running trails, and listening to music loud enough to wake the neighbors. When I need a break from all the thinking, nothing works like a good belly laugh. If you catch me queueing up Norm Macdonald, stop me before I’ve gone too far down the rabbit hole.

Ghostwriting turned out to be more than a career pivot. It became the throughline that brought all my past roles together. The research, the counseling, the teaching, the listening—they all live in this work. I’m grateful every day to do something that feels both meaningful and hard-earned: helping clients make sense of their experience, shape it with care, and share it in a way that makes a difference not just for them, but for the people they’re trying to reach.