Companies, platforms and ideas
built across four decades.

My professional foundation was journalism.

I began writing for The Diamondback while attending the University of Maryland. From there, I moved into freelance reporting for The Washington Post and The Associated Press before becoming a full-time reporter for The Journal Newspapers.

Journalism taught me how to listen, ask better questions, find the real story and explain complicated subjects in a way people could understand. It also taught me to work quickly without losing sight of accuracy, an expectation that became even more important when my work moved into breaking news, digital publishing and public safety.

Those lessons have followed me into every company and product I have helped build. Good journalism and good product development begin in much the same place: pay attention to what is actually happening, understand the people affected and do not assume you already know the answer.

CoolWriter Publications was the first company I founded, bringing together the writing, communications and marketing experience I had developed as a journalist.

One of its earliest major projects was a large campaign focused on preserving charitable gaming in Prince George’s County. For many volunteer fire departments and community organizations, charitable gaming was not simply entertainment; it was an important source of funding that supported their ability to serve.

That campaign led to additional work within the fire service, including projects with the Congressional Fire Services Institute and other organizations. It brought together several parts of my life that had previously seemed separate: journalism, marketing, public policy, technology and the fire service.

CoolWriter Publications became the bridge between reporting on stories and building organizations capable of shaping them. The relationships, experience and understanding developed through that work helped create the foundation for what came next: Firehouse.com.

Firehouse.com began with an early website I built for the Hyattsville Volunteer Fire Department and an unexpected call from Charlottesville Battalion Chief Charles Werner, who had seen the site while covering technology for Firehouse Magazine.

At 22, Chris Hebert and I pitched the idea of creating an online home for the fire service. The internet was still young, and the idea that firefighters would go online every day for news, training, professional resources and community was far from established.

We launched Firehouse.com on Christmas Day 1998. It grew into one of the earliest and most influential digital communities built specifically for the fire service, combining breaking news, training, discussion forums, e-commerce and connections among firefighters around the world.

The work was never only about building a successful website. We covered the Worcester Cold Storage fire and other defining events from a fire-service perspective. After September 11, our team built lasting memorial coverage and helped raise millions of dollars for the families of fallen firefighters. We worked alongside national fire-service organizations and helped build awareness and support for the federal Assistance to Firefighters and SAFER grant programs.

In 2024, Chris and I were inducted into the Firehouse Hall of Fame for our work creating and growing Firehouse.com. It remains one of the greatest honors of my career.

As Firehouse.com grew, my work expanded across the interactive division of its parent company, Cygnus Business Media.

I helped lead the development and growth of nearly 30 business-to-business digital properties spanning fire and emergency services, law enforcement, security and other professional industries. The work included launching new products, acquiring and repositioning existing properties, building digital audiences and developing revenue models at a time when traditional publishers were still working to understand the internet.

During that tenure, we acquired Officer.com, and I helped lead its relaunch and growth into one of the most-visited law-enforcement websites of its time. It extended the community-driven digital model we had developed for the fire service into policing while giving officers a major online destination for news, training, discussion and professional information.

In 2005, MIN Magazine named me one of its “21 Most Intriguing” media industry executives.

More important than the recognition was the experience of learning how to scale digital products inside a larger organization, bringing editorial judgment, technology, audience needs, marketing and sustainable business models together.

At Red 7 Media, I worked across specialized business-media and event-focused brands as Managing Director of Interactive Business Strategy, first in a full-time executive role and later as a consultant through Go Forward Media.

The role expanded my experience beyond public safety and deeper into the rapidly changing relationship between print publishing, live events, online audiences and digital revenue. It involved helping established media properties think beyond simply reproducing print content on a website and toward products designed specifically for how people used information online.

That chapter strengthened many of the ideas I would later bring back to public safety: understand the professional community, build around its actual behavior and create digital products that contribute to the business rather than existing as an afterthought.

I founded Go Forward Media in 2007 as an independent digital media and strategy company. It was an important transitional chapter in the larger story, creating space for the ideas and ventures that came next.

It created room to build websites, online communities, campaigns and digital services for specialized audiences, particularly in public safety. It also became the bridge between my earlier work in digital publishing and the technology, recruitment, communications and marketing companies that followed.

Go Forward Media was built around the idea that organizations serving focused professional communities needed more than generic digital services. They needed people who understood the audience, respected the mission and could connect strategy, content, technology and measurable results.

It also provided room to experiment. Some ideas became lasting businesses. Others became valuable lessons that influenced the work we built next.

Firefighter Nation was created as a social and professional network for firefighters during a period when online communities and social media were rapidly changing how people connected.

The goal was to build a firefighter-centered community where members could share experiences, follow industry developments and connect with others across departments, regions and specialties.

The platform extended many of the community ideas behind Firehouse.com while exploring a more member-driven model for the emerging social-web era. It reinforced a lesson that has carried through nearly everything I have built: technology is most valuable when it strengthens real relationships rather than trying to replace them.

Firefighter Nation became part of the larger Reed Elsevier Public Safety portfolio, connecting the community we had built with an established group of public-safety media and event brands serving fire and rescue, EMS, law enforcement and emergency communications.

My work during that period continued at the intersection of digital publishing, audience development, online community and public-safety media. It provided another perspective on how established publications, conferences and newer digital platforms could work together, and how difficult it could be for large organizations to integrate rapidly changing online products into traditional publishing structures.

The experience helped close the loop between the entrepreneurial work of building Firefighter Nation and the larger-scale media leadership lessons that began with Firehouse.com and Cygnus. It also helped clarify what I wanted to build next: products and companies that could move quickly, stay close to their users and solve practical problems for public-safety organizations.

Chris Hebert and I founded First Arriving as a marketing and communications company serving fire departments, EMS agencies, law-enforcement organizations and other public-safety organizations. Our early work included websites, recruitment campaigns, video, creative services and digital content.

The company later grew alongside Alex Ford, founder of Praetorian Digital. Together, that team brought forward a digital public-safety legacy that began more than 25 years ago with Firehouse.com and Police1.com, two of the earliest and most influential online communities created for first responders.

Back then, the challenge was that agencies lacked timely access to connected information. Today, the problem is almost the reverse: departments have enormous amounts of information scattered across too many systems, with little of it personalized or organized for real operational use.

The 2018 acquisition of the Public Safety Information Network platform changed First Arriving’s direction. What began as a digital-signage product evolved into a connected, department-specific information platform.

Following the separation of the company’s marketing and service divisions into Responder MAX, First Arriving is now singularly focused on technology, information and innovation. Its platform connects data from more than 130 systems into a unified operational view available around the clock through digital signage, web interfaces, tablets and mobile applications.

Today, First Arriving serves more than 1,400 agencies across North America. As founder and Chief Product Officer, I focus on product vision, integrations, user experience and the next generation of tools that help public-safety teams find, understand and act on critical information.

The technology has changed considerably since Firehouse.com launched in 1998. The underlying mission has not: connect first responders with the information they need and build the experience with a genuine understanding of the profession it serves.

Responder MAX grew from the marketing, recruitment, website and association-services work that Chris Hebert and I originally built within First Arriving. It helps public-safety agencies and associations recruit, communicate, strengthen their digital presence and tell their stories more effectively.

I have now handed the reins to a dedicated team led by co-founder Chris Hebert, President and COO Shannon Gilliland, and Vice President Nicole Newville. They have a great team behind them to continue Responder MAX’s growth story and carry that work forward.

One of the more unexpected product lines I have helped create is a series of officially licensed editions of the MONOPOLY® game from Hasbro built around the culture, traditions and experiences of first responders.

The series has included editions for firefighters, EMS professionals and law-enforcement officers. A fourth game, the Inferno Edition of Firefighters MONOPOLY®, is coming soon.