10/16/2026
I came to Berkeley in 1991 as an undergrad, and I’ve been in love with this place ever since.
At Cal, I couldn’t pick just one lane. I didn’t really want to. I was thrilled by how many fields existed that I’d never even known about. I was pre-med and drawn to natural science, and I spent a year in Madrid. I ended up with degrees in physics and Spanish. I was curious about everything, and I wanted to try it all.
So I did. In the years between college and business school, I didn’t just have jobs; I had several mini-careers. I was an experimental atomic physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. I was a bike messenger in San Francisco, grinding up hills and stairs until sundown. I taught at private schools around the Bay. I was an economic consultant helping foreign governments auction wireless spectrum, raising billions for their treasuries. I waited tables in Union Square and Bernal Heights. And the most fun of all: I guided adventurous, luxurious bike tours around the world for Backroads.
Eventually I ruled out medicine, law, and a PhD, and went to business school. After that I spent more than fifteen years building climate tech and renewable energy startups, mostly in Silicon Valley. I loved it: making markets, building relationships, untangling complex problems, creating deals and closing them.
Then came the turn. Building a solar business for apartment buildings gave me a taste of commercial real estate, and friends and family pushed me toward residential. Something clicked. Here was the thing I’d been circling my whole life: work that connects me with people who have a real, personal stake in how it all turns out. Within a year I was a licensed Realtor, working the Berkeley and East Bay market I’ve called home since 1991.
And this is the part I love. Real estate is challenging, uncertain, endlessly complex, and that’s exactly why it fits. Every problem is different. The people and the situations are exquisitely diverse. Now I get to bring my entire life’s work to bear: the faraway adventures, the hard science, the negotiations, the markets, and most of all the listening, hearing what truly matters to someone. All of it, finally, in one place.
