I grow audiences, build products, and make things people want to watch, hear, and use

Music runs through all of it. At WFMT I didn’t just run the station — I curated its music and programming for years, and that curation was one of the bigger reasons listening grew the way it did.

Away from work: I play trumpet, and piano (not well, though I’ve recently gotten back to practicing). The trumpet habit goes way back — drum major in high school, jazz and classical playing in wind ensembles, big bands, orchestras, and pit orchestras for musicals. At Tufts I kept it up: wind ensemble, the Latin big band, the pits for Chicago and A Little Night Music — plus the Boston College big band across town. In Paris, I played in the Sorbonne Big Band.

Since then I’ve performed with the Lakeside Pride Wind Ensemble in Chicago and the Queer Big Apple Corps in New York. In my Chicago years, the Old Town School of Folk Music got a lot of my evenings — guitar lessons, the klezmer ensemble, hip hop dance, their samba school and parade, and a brief, humbling stint in capoeira class. I also chaired the board of Ensemble Dal Niente, one of Chicago’s great new-music groups, early in their history.