Hi, I’m Jack!

I’m a Denver native with experience in multiple entrepreneurial and product roles. At the University of Southern California, I studied Computational Neuroscience with minors in Entrepreneurship and Product Design. I am passionate about the human mind, what motivates us, and why we make certain choices. Game-changing impact and fundamental improvement of users’ lives motivate me, which has primarily drawn me to the healthcare industry. I am a naturally contrarian thinker and enjoy solving big, multi-disciplinary problems.

Outside of work, I enjoy just about anything outside, making music, and carpentry/welding/fiberglass. Feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out my general résumé, personal values, or continue reading. On this site, you can also take a deeper dive into my work experience and fun projects.

My work philosophy

🔭 Impact is my North Star

The purpose of work is positive impact on the world. Impact is driving humanity forward, and ideas generally excite me in proportion to their potential positive impact. The ultimate impact is creating something from nothing, sharing big positive gains at scale. Change is not automatic—we have to create it. In the absence of intention, everything trends to chaos. See: TACO

🧠 I am a natural non-conformist

When approaching any problem, look at the big picture and question everything. The most impactful ideas are innovative, and the most innovative ideas aren’t being executed at scale by anyone else. When I imagine the future and think backwards, we won’t get there by repeating existing processes.

🪟 I am transparent

I value your time too much to waste it, even if that requires being direct. Authentic transparency is both the simplest and easiest approach. I say what I mean upfront and strive to avoid saying anything else. The recipe to win is directly creating genuine value for your people. Anything less is a local maxima. See: Business Communication Memo

🗿 I am an optimistic cynic

People are not perfect but are generally good. Humans are evolutionarily wired to make self-interested short-term decisions, and that’s OK—it’s just biology, and nature has often figured things out better than we we ever will! Incentives are a superpower, and we can achieve optimal outcomes by aligning our short-term self-interest and long-term, more abstract goals. Altruism is the ultimate expression of humanity, and we should behave selflessly whenever possible.

🌱 I have a strong growth mindset

The best way to create progress is to constantly push the limits of one’s own comfort zone. Humility is the root of creativity—when approaching a new problem, the first step is to drop everything and learn, for the wise man knows that he knows nothing. You have to understand the rules before you can purposefully break them. If everything feels easy and 100% in control, you’re going too slow. Really hard things are the only things truly worth trying, and you can always try again. I LOVE feedback—if you read this far, please reach out and let me know what you think of this page!

🚀 I believe deeply in my team and its ability to create value

I believe organizations have an internal locus of control, and I trust my teammates’ ability to create reality. No problem is too difficult, but many are poorly defined—any real problem has an actionable solution. Power laws and compounding are deeply rooted in nature, so there’s no reason to settle for anything less than an asymmetric upside. While we collectively know very few things, all things can be learned or tried.

Some of my favorite questions:

  • How can we solve water shortages in the Colorado River Basin?

  • How can we harness evolutionarily-rooted cognitive biases to improve human behavior?

  • How can we un-break incentives in the healthcare system to improve, simplify, and lower the cost of care?

  • How can we make the market for talent more efficient?

  • Is the National Park System the best way to protect our best lands and inspire citizens, or is its resulting overuse net negative?

  • How can we ensure that the ever-blurring line between our brains and computers progresses purposefully and ethically, resulting in the optimal outcome? What is the optimal outcome? What does the ideal brain-computer interface look like? What could we extrapolate from a perfect map of the brain?

  • What is the best way to learn?

  • What does our future beyond Earth look like?

  • How can we generally improve signal to noise ratio in the data that drives our everyday decisions?

  • What would it take to 10x the efficiency of the average American?

  • What is the best method to parallel park a trailer?

  • How can we better understand traumatic brain injury (TBI/concussion) and neurodegenerative diseases?

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few personality pictures: