None of this was ever part of a grand plan — because I didn't have one.
Hi, and thank you for being curious.
We’ve got three ways to go about this:
- If you’re looking for a straightforward career summary, you’ll find it here.
- If you’re interested in the details, navigate to the timeline.
- If you want the full context, keep reading.
My ‘career’ is hard to frame in traditional HR terms. Full of zig-zags, detours, and nonlinear progressions, the only way it might properly be understood is by telling you a little bit about me, my background, and the various ways I think. Hence this short series of statements…
Questions
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been skeptical of following the prescribed path. I naturally don’t like to order off the menu, and tend to balk at formulas, orthodoxies, and institutionalized thinking. Instead, I like to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and develop new ideas. From a young age, life struck me as a game — yet all I could think about was who created the rules and why. Here are some of the questions orienting my research.
Clarity
I have a relentless need to understand, to get a clear idea, to make complete and utter sense of things. My desire to grasp the big picture is arguably even a form of anxiety. But wherever it stems from, this natural preoccupation has over the years trained my mind into a strategic, map-making engine. I have a huge appetite for “deep” thinking — a love of connecting ideas and of forging mental architectures that allow me to achieve a total POV.
Fitness
Above all else, I value things that are fit, robust, or “antifragile.” Things that don’t just stand the test of time, but that have a deep sense of preparedness for whatever comes — resilience in the face of the bad, and opportunism in the face of the good. By contrast, I’m highly suspicious of anything gimmicky, superficial, or full of flash. There is even a moral aspect to this: I regard it as a duty to care about the long term, to build. It's the difference between being a consumer and being a citizen. In business, that means I gravitate towards systems, technologies, and processes that prioritise long-term success over isolated, flash-in-the-pan “wins.”
Beauty
A fourth element in my outlook is the importance of beauty. For me, beauty is a refuge and an essential nutrient, transcending the mundane and habitual in everyday life. But what fascinates me about beauty is that it isn’t simply an ornament that sits “on top” of things. Beauty emerges when the work, the thing itself, is crafted to a high degree of excellence; in a word, beauty is incredible design. That is why a bad product or service can irritate, while even something as humble as a well-designed toilet can capture our attention. This sensitivity to great craftsmanship — to uniquely well-made things — is what made me gravitate towards designing great products, services, systems, and brands.
Upbringing
I was born and raised in a very small mining village in Quebec. Life revolved around the quarries, and everyone was, personally knew or depended on, a granite stone carver. The folks in my village made these kinds of monuments. I think this particular context impacted me in at least two ways. First, my ethos is predominantly blue collar, which means I tend to admire hard-working folks with ambition, fortitude, skin-in-the-game and, generally, a desire to build durable structures with solid foundations. Second, being raised in a small town also made me suspicious of the elites and elitist thinking in general, which I see as being disconnected from reality. As a result, my views tend to be conservative, rational and pragmatic.
Circumstance
These are the core ingredients. The rest was circumstantial. I was in a sense lucky that my career started right when “digital” became a transformative force (right after the go-go ’90s dot-com era) so I rode that horse, and it allowed me to have a whole range of formidable career opportunities, which I am thankful for, because I learned a lot.
Freedom
In the world of LEGO, some kids follow the instructions to build a predetermined kit, while others “free build” from a pile of random-coloured bricks, making the most of what was available to them. I built my career from the pile, and was lucky to have enough creativity and good fortune to put together something that, however nonlinear, I like to think makes sense.
All pictures (except church) by Nick DeWolf via The Alpine Review, courtesy of Steve Lundeen and Maggie DeWolf.
Thanks for reading.
Learn more about my work here or peruse through my timeline below for the full story.