I am a native North Carolinian who lives in Brooklyn. After graduating from Chapel Hill and the University of Chicago I worked as an investment banker, CEO of several start-up companies, producer of the play “Jeffrey” at the Geffen Playhouse, and headed a film and TV production services company in the West Village. In 2008 I was a candidate for the US Senate (D-NC).

I have been a contributing writer on equality and justice issues for a host of publications, and a lecturer on contemporary US politics as an adjunct professor- focusing on the corrosive influence of money in the electoral system. News outlets CNBC, NPR, NBC, ABC, FOX, Channel One (Britain) and ORF (Austria) have featured me as a guest.

In 2019 I completed a compilation of fifty portraits in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. My paintings tend to weaponize the male form to render the complex emotions triggered by negotiating identity in a world that vacillates between toleration of and contempt for difference. By recasting the otherwise charged symbolism of the erotic male form, I put forth a challenge to normative constructions of masculinity, beauty and morality -- coaxing the viewer to play a role in this dynamic of otherness. My art has been featured at Hands on Urban Artexpositions in Montpellier and Paris (2022), respectively, as well group exhibitions Transforming Minds at the East Village Art Collective in New York (2022) and Send Me Nudes at nAd Gallery in Brooklyn (2024).

In October 2024 I was offered a performing role in a lifestyle advertising campaign. Subsequently I have had a leading or supporting role in ten film and television productions, three theatrical productions and twelve commercial campaigns in New York and Los Angeles.