Firefighter, marketer,
journalist, techie, founder.

I joined HVFD in 1987 at age 12. My path there began with a letter to a battalion chief at another firehouse; the reply came from the late Chief Donald “Doc” Moltrup, welcoming me to Hyattsville instead. I still have that letter. Over the years I served as Firefighter/EMT, Lieutenant and Fire Marshal, and as President and Board Chair, and remain a Life Member.

After building one of the earliest fire department websites for HVFD, an unexpected call led to the first concept for Firehouse.com. I co-founded and launched it with my longtime collaborator Chris Hebert in 1998, and it became a central online home for the world’s fire service, combining breaking news, training and discussion with coverage honoring fallen firefighters and fundraising for their families, from the Worcester 6 to more than $50 million raised after 9/11 in support of the IAFF’s primary fund. In 2024, the two of us were inducted together into the Firehouse Hall of Fame for it.

A senior editor of The Diamondback at the University of Maryland, where I later served on the newspaper’s non-profit board of directors, I freelanced as a breaking-news reporter and photographer for The Washington Post and the Associated Press. I went on to found FirefighterNation.com in 2007, served as Publisher of Officer.com, and created the EMS World website, later working with JEMS. The same focus on useful information and professional community carried across every public safety discipline.

Today I lead product at First Arriving IO, Inc., connecting agencies’ information across digital signage, web and mobile, and evolving it into a full 360 internal communications platform for public safety. I also founded First Arriving, LLC, recently rebranded as Responder MAX and now led by Shannon Gilliland, Chris Hebert and Nicole Newville, which continues the legacy of marketing, recruitment and website work central to my career. My approach stays practical: start with the real problem, listen to the people doing the work, and build something that makes the organization easier to run.