I’ve read that you decided to write a new chapter for yourself after 9/11—can you tell me about that?
It was less a decision, and more a profound moment of clarity. I was working in finance, and truly enjoyed my work—it was fascinating, social, and I felt myself growing—but for me it wasn’t fulfilling a sense of purpose. Being in the Towers on 9/11, I had a moment where I thought, “If I get out of this, I’m going to do something else.” I didn’t know what it would be, just that it wouldn’t be what I was doing.
The first thing I did was to train as an EMT and work in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, for an ambulance company there. It was during this work that I started getting really angry about how broken our mental health systems of care are. I started doing some financial modeling in my free time, looking at how silly it was to use emergency medicine to treat chronic mental health conditions.
Things organically developed from there. I went to Columbia to take undergrad psych classes and worked in a research lab. After two years, I applied for graduate programs, targeting programs that had strong quantitative approaches to evaluating how mental health treatments and systems worked. Every step of the way, my anger was gradually honed into passion and drive. I couldn’t stop thinking about how our systems worked, and I knew I didn’t want to just study them—I wanted to shape them.
What do you find rewarding, exciting, challenging about behavioral health? How, if at all, does it dovetail with the financial work you did earlier in your career?
First, our systems of mental health care are so misaligned and poorly designed that it’s an area filled with opportunities for improvement. That, to my systems brain, has been the most exciting part of the last twenty years. I’ve found that my finance background is a super-power. Being able to build systems that work for patients and clinicians only matters if those systems are financially sustainable, and I find that I spend a significant portion of my time in front of Excel modeling hypothetical P&Ls.
The diversity of skill required to be successful in my work makes this constantly exciting. In any given day I am speaking in front of large audiences, running meetings, building a product, reviewing statistical analyses, editing an academic paper, meeting with patients, defending a budget, talking with venture capital ... it goes on and on. I love that variety of work.
How did your career unfold, both at the beginning and after your pivot?
Naturally. My curiosity and anger just led me from one step to the next. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve been hungry for knowledge. I loved college, and I liked learning, but I didn’t feel a focused drive until I wanted to tackle a problem with our health care system, and it took me years to build the knowledge and skill to understand such a complex and interactive marketplace. Grad school was one of the greatest experiences of my lifetime. When I was at Bowdoin, I tried to involve myself in as many things as I could—sports, theater, music, classes, socializing—at graduate school I had a much more singular focus and was able to delve deeply into the mathematical and psychological models I needed to unpack the complexity in mental health. That took six years.
Once I defended my dissertation, things began to move faster. My prior career gave me a strong sense of confidence that allowed me to quickly build a consulting business—working with insurance companies and health care organizations to understand why they were struggling to manage their mental health and substance use treatment networks and associated costs. That work swiftly materialized into a medical director position at Atrius Health—an accountable care organization with roughly one million primary care patients in the greater Boston area. From there, I moved relatively quickly into a department chair position at Reliant Medical Group, building their integrated BH model from scratch, and eventually to my current position, leading both Reliant and Atrius BH departments, serving over a million primary care patients. Along the way, I cofounded a startup on mental health symptom assessment and managed to keep publishing a couple of academic papers every year on the work I was doing.
Are there ways that your academic or extracurricular work at Bowdoin has come into play in your life or career?
Absolutely. Let’s start with theater and performance. I did a lot of that at Bowdoin, and the ability to speak cogently in front of others is absolutely critical to success in almost any leadership role. I think we underestimate how valuable performing (in theater, music, sports) is to future leaders.
I’d also say that my experience going for honors in economics in my senior year taught me a lot about myself that I still use today. During my time at Bowdoin, honors in econ was not something that students did very often. I decided I wanted to combine my computer science and econ majors to build a computer model of an economic process. I loved that part and spent most of my time on it. But I hated writing the paper. I hated it. It felt too slow and onerous, and boring. So, my honors paper was pretty terrible. Before my defense, Professor Rick Freeman took me out for a coffee to let me know he’d read my paper and it wasn’t honors worthy. He gave me the option of not defending it in front of the committee—which I promptly declined. My defense was everything I love about learning—it was fast-paced with lots of great questions and, by the end, I’d talked my way back into honors territory.
What brought you to Bowdoin?
Environmental science. Seriously! That’s what I was most excited about when I left high school. I also wanted a small-school environment where I could get to know most of my classmates. I had gone to boarding school and loved it, so I was really looking for an extension and expansion of that experience.
What inspires you?
People. Humans. I’ve worked clinically with thousands of people striving to overcome their personal demons, and I find humans to be inspiring. Each of us feel so alone with the parts we think are broken, and our pain and challenge grow with isolation. When humans come together and connect around shared purpose—when we create spaces that are safe to take risks—we are capable of such goodness and creativity. You could also say that I’m inspired (enraged) by the ways in which we are traumatized or damaged by one another. Most folks are generally good and kind, in my experience, and those who aren’t usually are that way because they carry tremendous hurt and pain. We pass pain on to others, because the systems we need to help work through that pain often fail us. See! It comes full circle—fixing our broken behavioral health system should help us to be better and kinder to each other.
Is there something about your work or life that others would find surprising?
I am a huge fan of Dungeons and Dragons. Of all the things I have done in my life that promote creativity and team building, D&D looms most prominent and impactful. I’ve actually trained as a clinician to use D&D as a therapy tool for PTSD and to coach people on how to overcome social anxiety, build social and team-based skills.
Is there something about YOU that others might find surprising?
I’ve had my own journey with anxiety since 9/11. I don’t present as anxious, but that’s because I’m doing what most anxious people do: masking it. I’ve made tremendous strides in managing my own anxiety, and it still crops up in ways that surprise even me.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
My brain is really restless, so I love doing things that occupy my brain while also restoring my energy. I think it’s incredibly important for adults to continue to play. I love to read—I always have a book going. I run and work out almost daily because it helps so much with my anxiety. I love to cook with my wife. I love playing with my boys, who are nine and twelve. And, I still play D&D almost every week.
Best Bowdoin memory, or most-lasting lesson from your Bowdoin days?
I remember a perfect Bowdoin day, for me. It was a Saturday in the fall of my sophomore year. I had made the A-side for rugby, and we had a home game behind the gym that morning. After we won the game, I went back to my dorm, showered, changed, ate lunch, and then played D&D for the whole afternoon before performing in a Meddiebempsters concert that night. A day full of diverse tasks and people.
This story first appeared in the Fall 2026 issue of Bowdoin Magazine. Manage your subscription and see other stories from the magazine on the Bowdoin Magazine website.
