A high-school dropout who taught himself technology, built a company that paid people their way out of poverty, then spent a decade handing that ladder to kids. This is the public record, open for inspection.
The other work on this site argues from evidence and lets the data carry it. I want to hold myself to the same standard. So this page is not a brochure and it is not the place where I argue for someone else. It is mine, and it is checkable.
Transparency and credibility have to stay in balance, and the only way I know to keep them there is to be honest about all of it, the stumbles and the wins together. I dropped out of high school. I finished later through a correspondence course. I was self-taught in technology, and I built a career, and then a company, out of a hobby. None of that is polished. All of it is true. The dates, the awards, and the programs below are matters of public record, written up at the time by reporters I did not control. You do not have to take my word for any of it.
Long before I had language like active inference, I was living the thing UNI describes: a world that felt a size too small, and the slow, stubborn work of widening it, first for myself, then for everyone I could reach.
Grew up in Waukegan, Illinois. Had a hard time in high school and dropped out as a junior, then finished through a correspondence course.
Garden Center crews, construction, HVAC, refurbishing copy centers, freelance IT, then a long corporate run at CCH and beyond. Curiosity about how things actually run, learned from the floor up.
Founded Leeward Business Advisors in my adopted hometown of Kenosha, grew it, and turned its community work toward kids and local economic growth.
UNI, Solution Wright, Collab Wright, and Active Inference Training — the same question at industrial scale: what world is too small, and what is ours to widen? Collaborating with Dr. Alianna Maren and Michael Strike.
Everything here was reported at the time or is documented in my community portfolio. Where a number comes from someone else, I have kept it in their words.
The community work above ran in parallel with a long career in IT operations and incident management for some of the largest enterprises in the country — mostly out of state, mostly under the hood, almost always at 3 a.m. when something critical broke. The numbers and the named programs below are from the public résumé, kept current.
My childhood home was not always safe. Dave was. He took me fishing, to horse farms, to flea markets, to anywhere he thought my curiosity might grow. He did not lecture. He let me talk to him, and he talked to me back, like I was already a person worth listening to. That was the difference.
He saves my life every day. I carry his energy with me as priors, along with the energy and stories of the thousands of people I have met and talked with since. The whole point of talking with someone, instead of at them, is how he taught me to be in a room. It is the foundation under every workshop, every classroom, every CEO meeting on this page.
“I don't think anything I do is exceptional. For me, it's about trying to be exponential. There's so many good people and good things happening in our community. It's really about what we can do together.”
These were written by reporters at the time, in the Kenosha News and other local Wisconsin press, and are archived in my community portfolio. They are here so the claims above can be checked against the record, not just taken on faith. The plates woven through the cards above are the actual photographs that ran with these pieces, with photographer credit and publication date intact. Many of the originals now sit behind paywalls; the archived copies live here so the record stays public.
Outlet attributions reflect the local Wisconsin press of record; a few pieces ran across the affiliated Kenosha News and Journal Times. Originals are held in the community portfolio and available on request.
The kid who is told he is too much. The employee a system has written off. The small business everyone assumes cannot grow. In every one of those rooms, the most useful question was never what is wrong with them? It was what about the world around them is too small, and what is mine to widen?
That is the whole of Universal Natural Intelligence, taken from a county to a thesis. UNI is the loop I lived, made visible and made rigorous, so the next person does not have to discover it the hard way. If the record above is worth anything, it is as evidence that this is buildable, in the open, with everyone who will help.
Books, code, writing, and a calendar that is genuinely open. If you want to test any of this, or just talk, the door is here.
I did not finish high school on time. I have been the kid who was told he was too much, and I have been the executive who got to tell another kid that the very thing he was scolded for was a gift.
If a world can be widened for one person, it can be measured, and it can be done again.
That is the wager of everything here. The record is open. So is the invitation.