In addition to being an avid reader and business writer, I have built my career around personal finance and investing. Since a young age, I was interested in the stock market and how businesses of all types worked and the ideas that generated them. I grew up in an area where small business owners lived and worked. From the neighbors across the street who ran a successful international beauty products company, to the families that created Fortune 500 firms. Dayton, Ohio is a town that was built on innovation and where it was possible to actually meet and talk to some of the most successful business people and professionals in the United States.

I finished my bachelors degree in political science at The Ohio State University in 1983, fully intending to go to law school afterwards. However, life intervened as my mother was diagnosed with Alzehimer’s disease at an early age, so I felt that I should spend as much time with her as possible. I then commenced a haphazard career that included life insurance sales, a stint with a national yellow pages advertising firm, several years as a commercial property / casualty insurance agent, and finally to my real love, investment management and personal financial planning. My first job in my current field was with Morgan Stanley in their Dayton office. Then, a friend of mine recruited me to start a wealth management group for a regional bank, where I met Darren Harp, who became my founding partner at my present firm, Artifex Financial Group.

We started our firm in 2007, right before the global financial crisis. That was an instructive period for us, and turned out to be beneficial for both our clients and our firm. We’ve since weathered several financial storms with our clients, successfully navigating them through each of them with slightly different approaches. These experiences were instrumental in the creation of my first book, which you can read about in my blog.

As much as I love my business, I love my family more, and try to spend as much time as possible with them. I’m convinced that raising children is truly the most valuable thing any of us do in life.

Other things I enjoy are learning (I finished a masters degree at Harvard University in 2020), reading and writing, golf, hiking, boating, my dogs, and travel. I hope to write a fictional story someday soon.

I hope you get as much out of reading my words as I do writing them.

All the best,