Gun Violence Prevention & Advocacy

Advocacy is not a side project. It is an extension of leadership. When you have spent your career building teams, managing operations, and making decisions that affect people’s lives, the instinct to speak up on issues that matter does not stop at the office door. This category covers the work I do outside the boardroom: gun violence prevention, civic engagement, reproductive rights, and the broader question of what it means to use your platform for something beyond profit.

My advocacy started with a personal story. My mother Joyce died by suicide with a gun when I was 20 months old. For 36 years I did not talk about it. When I finally did, in TIME Magazine, at the Democratic National Convention, and on CBS News, the response changed my understanding of what leadership can look like when you stop separating the personal from the professional.

I served as a DNC Representative for Wisconsin from 2017 to 2023, completed an Everytown for Gun Safety fellowship, and served as Board President of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin’s C4 board from 2021 to 2024. I have testified before state legislatures, organized community events, and worked with national organizations on policy and messaging. I ran for Congress in Wisconsin’s 5th District in 2016 because I believed the skills I built running construction companies could translate to public service.

The posts in this category explore the intersection of business leadership and social impact. How do you balance professional responsibilities with advocacy work? What happens when your public stance on an issue creates tension with clients or colleagues? How do you build a platform that is authentic without turning personal pain into performance? These are the questions I wrestle with, and the articles here reflect that work in progress. Whether you are a leader considering your own advocacy path or someone trying to understand the connection between business acumen and civic engagement, this content is written from experience, not theory.