As an award-winning producer, brand manager, and licensing luck dragon with 20+ years of experience, it’s been my surreal and silly privilege to serve as a consigliere for top media companies and make authentic, meaningful contributions to their beloved brands and fandoms.

Genuine began in 2016 as an art book publisher, hired by Alcon to embed into the post-production crew of Blade Runner 2049 and produce the “making-of” art book supervised by director Denis Villeneuve himself. After earning his trust on what became The Art and Soul of Blade Runner 2049, I followed Villeneuve onto Dune to oversee its master tabletop gaming program – the gold standard for our holistic brand management method. Along with our first RPGs for Alien and Blade Runner with our dear friends at Free League, our first flagships all became critical & commercial hits and paved the way for our future, proving that passion can deliver best-selling, award-winning results every time. Ten years later, our core business is still what we do best: aligning the latest and greatest brands with only the most passionate partners who can’t help but bring out their best.

Prior to launching Genuine, I spent two decades hopscotching across all corners of pop culture: film, TV, gaming, publishing, theater, podcasts, marketing, merch, and more. Working at fancy joints like Lionsgate, Psyop, The Jim Henson Company, Archaia, and Quixotic. Touting snazzy titles like Head of Publishing, Head of Marketing, Head of Business Development, Creative Director, and Director of Film/TV Development. My Linkedin profile looks more like a labyrinth worthy of the Goblin King, but trust me, it all makes sense when you get to know me. 

I first started in Hollywood as a film/TV creative exec in the 2000s, making a name for myself as an outspoken geek during the dark times when nobody cared about speculative fiction or fans. Working at The Jim Henson Company as Director of Development, I specialized in scouting books, comics, and manga for Film/TV adaptation. I later reverse engineered my rolodex to launch Henson’s first in-house publishing unit. As Head of Publishing, we released over 200 books, comics, and manga over the next few years, most notably the best-selling Fraggle Rock comics and Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, the only licensed comic to win the top Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel of the year.

Though licensing was considered “ancillary” at the time, Henson’s success in publishing revived their IP and rekindled a fandom that endures even today. Gaining global recognition for my work, I became a known authority on fandom, licensing, and a new buzzword back then called transmedia. With rising demand for this new expertise, I left Henson in 2010 to tilt at windmills as a paladin of pop culture – pursuing the work I’ve happily done since as a producer, brand manager, loremaster, and strategic advisor for media companies who need a resourceful friend to enter new markets, expand their worlds, and authentically express their IP into new ways. 

Over the years, I’ve since forged myriad landmark L&M and M&A deals, sold millions of units into retail, generated millions more in royalties, set records in crowdfunding, earned oodles of awards, and fostered an embarrassment of roster riches and a body of chart-topping, heart-stopping work spanning books, comics, collectibles, games, and eclectic geekery. 

These days, I’m best known as a leading producer, designer, brand manager, and packager of licensed games. Alongside best-in-class partners, I’ve been the liquid schwartz for some of the most high-profile licensed games in the business – boasting over 10M units sold and 50+ awards across 500+ releases in the last six years alone. 

Hits include the Alien RPG with Free League; the Altered Carbon RPG with Hunters; Apex Legends: The Board Game with GCU; the Batman board game with Portal Games; the Blade Runner RPG with Free League; the Blade Runner video game with Nightdive; Call of Duty: The Board Game with Arcane Wonders; the Fandom x Dire Wolf Cortex acquisition; the Diablo tabletop program with Blizzard; the Dune master tabletop program with Legendary and GF9; the Hello Neighbor party game with Arcane Wonders; the Meow Wolf RPG with Exalted Funeral; the Munchkin video game with Dire Wolf; The Dragon Prince master tabletop program for Wonderstorm; the Vampire: The Masquerade living card game for Paradox; The Walking Dead RPG with Free League, and The Wheel of Time tabletop program with Dire Wolf. 

Though gaming is my passion, other side quests and sandboxes include:

• Produced 100+ licensed comics such as Farscape, Fraggle Rock, Thrilling Adventure Hour (2013 Best Anthology Eisner nom), and Vampire: The Masquerade.

• Facilitated the sale of Archaia to Boom! Studios in 2013, resulting in the largest independent US comics library in history. Later acquired by PRH in 2024.

• Served 2+ years as Strategic Advisor to Webtoon, building retail programs for select flagships and a new D2C POD webstore to service the library as a whole. 

• Acted as Head of Marketing and co-founder of Comic-Con HQ, one of the first SVOD fast channels as a JV between Lionsgate and Comic-Con International.

• Served as Creative Director at Psyop, the world-renowned commercial agency that specialized in transmedia and integrated marketing campaigns.

Among my clients over the years, humble brags include Activision Blizzard, Alcon, AMC, Crunchyroll, DC, Disney, EA, eOne, HBO, Legendary, Lionsgate, Madison Wells, Marvel, Meow Wolf, Netflix, Niantic, Paradox, Powerhouse, Relativity Media, Skydance, Sony, SYFY, tinyBuild, 20th Century Studios, Warner Bros, Webtoon, and Wonderstorm. 

Among the worlds in which I’ve worked and played, highlights include Alien, Altered Carbon, Apex Legends, Batman, Blade Runner, Call of Duty, Dark Crystal, Diablo, The Dragon Prince, Dune, Farscape, Fraggle Rock, God of High School, Hawken, Hello Neighbor, Hooky, Labyrinth, Lore Olympus, Meow Wolf, Munchkin, Shadow & Bone, Sweet Home, Temple Run, Thrilling Adventure Hour, Tower of God, Vampire: The Masquerade, The Walking Dead, and Wheel of Time.

Among the awards our work has won, honors include multiple Game of Year Awards, Graphic Novel of the Year, Best Thematic Game, Best Strategic Game, Best Card Game, Best Family Game, Best Roleplaying Game, Best Expansion, Best Supplement, Best Adventure, Best Writing, and Best Production Values. One of our flagships, Dune: Imperium with Dire Wolf, resides at #5 and #6 on Boardgamegeek’s esteemed Best Board Games of All Time – the highest ranked licensed games in its 20+ year history.

Yet far above any boffo socko sales figures, franchises, or fancy name drops, the most important part of this journey have been the friends I’ve made along the way. I’ve been fortunate enough to make lasting friendships with some of the best publishers, creators, and creative partners around like Arcane Wonders, Archaia, Asmodee, Brotherwise Games, CMON, Dark Horse, Dire Wolf, Free League, GF9, Modiphius, Nightdive, Penguin Random House, Portal Games, Quarto, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Sixmorevokda, Titan, Vault, and Weta Workshop. For anybody trying to make pop culture a bigger part of their lives, my greatest advice is to prioritize the people. Above the IP, above the project, it’s the people that make your work meaningful and ultimately make things that matter to brands and fans alike. My life is full of so many incredible people that inspire me and bring out my best, and I can only wish you all that kind of success. 

Throughout my career, I’ve never followed one industry track. I chose to boldly go wherever fandom was redefining our industry, and that’s how I’ve found myself working across all markets and sitting in every seat at the stakeholder’s table. Licensor and licensee. Publisher and developer. Client and vendor. Buyer and seller. Writer and editor. Maker and marketer. At any given time, I know what it’s like to be everyone else in the process. And all these experiences have helped me to empathize with partners and engineer a way to cultivate and celebrate franchises from a holistic, fan-forward perspective. It’s simple, really. My process, my whole career in fact, is defined by one belief: there is no such thing as “ancillary” media. If you want people to love what you do, you must make all you do a labor of love.

With Jersey roots and humble Michigan beginnings, it is baffling how I ended up doing this. I normally don’t have free time, but when I do, I am likely lost in an open-world RPG, eating Korean BBQ, or entertaining my two cats, Mooncake and Cookiepuss.