My story

My mom, Joyce, shot and killed herself on September 8, 1979. I was 22 months old.

I don't know what my mother's voice sounds like. I don't know what it feels like to have her tell me she loves me. I was too young to keep any of it. No voice, no touch, nothing of my own to remember her by.

She missed everything. My high school graduation and the track scholarship that put me through college. Every meet, every game. Learning to tie my shoes, ride a bike, brush my teeth. Playing tooth fairy when my teeth fell out. My first wedding. The birth of all three of my kids. She missed it because she had easy access to a gun instead of easy access to mental health care.

She was carrying untreated postpartum depression. She struggled with alcoholism and with things at home. Add the weight of being a young parent, and a handgun her own father had given her for self-defense, and you have a recipe for tragedy. She was at her lowest, and depression was lying to her. It told her my world would be better without her in it.

It took years before I could do something with it.

Around 2012 I got involved. One Million Moms for Gun Control, which became Moms Demand Action. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which became Everytown for Gun Safety. I became a local spokesperson. I sat with other survivors. I testified in front of committees at the local and state level. I spoke at hundreds of rallies, in living rooms, anywhere people would listen.

Let me be clear about what I believe, because people assume. I do not believe in gun bans. An outright ban is not a real thing and it is never going to happen, so I would rather spend my energy on what is possible. Common sense. Practical. Things that can become law and save the most lives across every kind of gun violence.

Universal background checks on every sale, including private ones. A red flag law that lets a family member temporarily remove guns from someone at their lowest, like my mom was. Here is what should stop you cold: in Wisconsin you can buy a gun the same day you apply. It can take months to get a first mental health appointment. The help is the hard part to reach, and the gun is the easy part. That is backwards.

So I decided to change the people who write the law, not just the law.

Being an advocate means standing in front of elected officials and making yourself vulnerable in front of people your tax dollars pay for. A lot of them do not listen. So in 2016 I ran for Congress in Wisconsin's 5th district, on gun violence prevention, women's reproductive rights, and affordability, especially student loan reform.

I lost. But I learned how politics actually works, how the sausage gets made. It is ugly and transactional, and it is also a necessary evil. After the campaign I was elected to the DNC and served about six or seven years, on the executive board of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. I also served as an elector for Joe Biden. Afterward I got death threats, it became too much, and I stepped back for my own mental health.

I have called the suicide lifeline several times in my life. I am glad it was there.

I have been in therapy for years, and thank God for it. I was recently diagnosed with a few things, including ADHD and PTSD, all the acronyms. It is something I live with and keep sorting out. I am not unique in that. I am not the only one, and I know it.

People who ask for help should be commended. It is not easy to admit you need it, and men are especially bad at it. Some people will tell you it makes you less of a man. It is the opposite. It takes courage, and you do not only do it for yourself. You do it for your family, for everyone who counts on you. After what depression did to my mother, I am not going to pretend I am above any of this. I am proof that you ask for the help and you keep going.

On January 1, 2002, I started my own company out of my garage with nothing.

I got into roofing in 1996, back in high school. I worked for a company, became part owner, and helped grow it, then parted ways on good terms when my ambition pulled me toward the commercial side. Then I built my own from nothing into one of the top five roofing companies in Wisconsin, union sheet metal and union roofing both.

Then the recession hit. It reached commercial roofing in 2009 and 2010, and customers paid far slower than they had agreed to in writing. I burned through my cash reserves and my line of credit, and I could not keep up. It ended in an involuntary Chapter 7 liquidation in 2011.

I fell in love with sheet metal, got fired, and found my way back to building.

In 2011 I went to work for Metal-Era and learned the technical side of this industry: how edge metals are tested, how building codes are made. I even worked with the Canadian government on codes that lined up with ours. I also got fired. After ten years of running my own company I was not very manageable yet. I can own that now.

A former employee and friend named Josh reached out about All American Roofing. I took a supplier role at Allied Building Supply first, then a guy named Ricardo recruited me, and in 2014 I became president. A trademark fight forced a new name, Roofed Right America, which I trademarked. I grew it from five million dollars to thirty-five million, and then it was sold to private equity.

After the sale, we stopped seeing eye to eye. I value my mental health more than a paycheck, so I resigned at the end of October 2025. It was hard. I lost a dear friend over that disagreement, someone I still miss to this day. But it was time to go.

I love my job. I have not been able to say that in a very long time.

After twelve years I was sure I needed out of roofing. I went to Great Day Improvements selling three-season sunrooms for a few months. Then a recruiter called about a company in Chicago, and I talked to Tom, then Scott, Nate, Harry, Gary, and Tim. Scott's company, Wolkow Braker, had just taken exclusive management of MetalMaster. The company converted to an ESOP, and the whole thing is essentially a rebuild.

MetalMaster is 49 years old. It has a rich history and an incredible amount of capacity, and it is like a caged animal that just needs to be unleashed. That is what I am here to do as president. I have a real vision for where this company can go, and a good group of people to do it with.

My kids are the best of me.

Sydney is 27. We had her while I was still in college, so she has had to grow up about as fast as I did. Kyan is 18 and about six foot five, plays lacrosse on a partial scholarship at Illinois Wesleyan, and he is just an awesome kid. Josie is 13 and a complete spitfire, funny and creative, and she loves to dance. I got divorced in 2020. Amanda and I are good friends, and we co-parent well.

Then there is Anne. I met her on Hinge on April 13, 2023, at 8:35 in the evening, wearing a black hoodie that said "Say less," because I was trying to be funny. I basically had to beg her to meet me. I was hooked. About six weeks in I told her I loved her, and she said, "Well, I like you a lot." That stung. But I knew she was my person.

No single label fits me, and that is the whole point.

I am a businessman who built companies from a garage, lost one, and built more. I am an advocate who turned the worst thing that ever happened to me into a fight to spare other families from it. I ran for Congress and served my party. I am a father of three, and I am marrying the love of my life. None of those on its own is the whole story, and the scattered pieces of me online never add up to the actual person.

What connects all of it is simple. I lost my mother before I could remember her, in a moment when help was out of reach and a gun was not. I have spent my life making sure the people I am responsible for have the opposite of what she had. Reach the help. Ask for it out loud. Keep going.