About Me
A Midwestern Kid
I grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago: Lombard and Mt. Prospect. My parents were both from blue-collar families in the area. One grandfather worked the night shift in the railroad yard. The other drove an oil truck. My dad, with a high school education, somehow snagged a white-collar job after WWII.
My first “house” was a converted garage. (Even then there were ADUs!) Then we moved to a small ranch house in a new subdivision carved out of a farmer’s field. It was a real family neighborhood, where kids roamed safely with their friends all day.
Lombard, IL
DePauw University
Determined to be the first kid in my family to attend college, I started working at age 12 to pay for it - since my parents couldn’t. I worked after school and weekends cleaning animal cages for a business that serviced research labs in the Chicago area. At 18 I was old enough to get on the assembly line of a can factory at the massive wage of $1.65/hour.
After putting myself through college at DePauw and earning a master’s degree at Vanderbilt, I started my career at B. Dalton Bookseller - a retail chain that grew from 100 stores to 500 during my tenure. I eventually moved to HQ in Minneapolis to manage a region and then a large group of book buyers. I spent my nights and weekends at the University of Minnesota picking up my MBA.
A Move to California
One of my vendors, Sunset Books, offered me a Marketing Manager job in a place called Menlo Park, CA. I took it. The job at Sunset turned into a family. I met a food editor at Sunset who had grown up in Palo Alto. Two years later, Claire and I were married and along came our first child, Sarah. When Sarah was not even two, Claire said it was time to move home to Palo Alto. We did. Our family continued to grow with the birth of our sons Ben and Jacob, and, all these years later, we still love it here.
Sunset Books
1st Day of School at Walter Hays
Family beach trip
2020 backyard wedding
The startup, risk-taking buzz here in Silicon Valley was highly appealing to me, so I shifted out of books and into personal computer software - knowing absolutely nothing about software. I spent the next couple decades as a software startup CEO, starting with a Software Publishing Corp spinoff called Power Up! Software – the first ever mail-order software catalogue.
When my third company was sold, I decided to shift careers again to my current role as an executive recruiter – finding great tech execs to scale young companies.
A Focus on Community Service
In parallel with my career, as soon as I could manage the time commitment around three kids and demanding startup jobs, I looked for opportunities to make an impact in my community. My entry point into community service was working on hunger and homelessness on the board of Urban Ministry of Palo Alto, which I helped merge into InnVision, the regional organization for the homeless (now even better as part of LifeMoves).
Coaching Palo Alto Little League
El Camino Park Reopening 2015
What started with an extra “Coach” T-shirt morphed into many years of service to youth baseball, where I managed Palo Alto Little League teams and then stepped into board leadership as President of Palo Alto Babe Ruth.
In 2010, I was appointed to the Parks & Recreation Commission and was elected Chair by my fellow commissioners three times. Seven years later, I was appointed to the Planning & Transportation Commission, where I was elected Chair twice.
In 2022, you elected me to serve you on City Council. In 2024, I was elected Vice Mayor, and in 2025, I was elected Mayor of Palo Alto. As your elected leader, it has been an honor to achieve results that improve our city. As Chair of the Housing and Finance Committees, I have led on policy changes for zoning and programs for new housing and transportation needs, public safety investments, fiscal discipline, retail vibrancy, and homelessness. We continue to deal with challenging issues, and I remain highly motivated to serve the residents of our city and make Palo Alto an even better place to live.