Becoming a Community Builder
Being a connector didn't come naturally to me. These are the moments that taught me my superpower is building community.
Where it started
In 2013, NFL UP! won the Sports Emmy for Outstanding New Approaches. I was an associate producer on the show. When our name was called at Lincoln Center, Michael Strahan and Joe Buck were waiting on stage to hand over the award, and I stayed in my seat. I was too afraid to go on stage.
Behind that smile in this photo is a moment I knew I'd regret, possibly for the rest of my life. So I promised myself fear would never keep me off a stage again.
When I joined Boston Consulting Group in 2015, I kept that promise to myself. The job was standing in front of executives and steering committees, winning influence and moving decisions. That's where I learned to own the room.
The thing I'm proudest of
My best work at BCG Digital Ventures wasn't for a client. From scratch, I built a mentorship program that paired students from Bright Star Schools, in an under-resourced part of Los Angeles, with BCG mentors.
Over 60 students enrolled each year. We ran a full curriculum in 2018 and 2019 and even brought in the LA Kings as a partner. The program kept going after I left in 2020.
That's when I knew building community was my superpower.
The CCO Club
At BCG, I watched the most successful senior partners win through relationships. I took that lesson to UpdateAI, the company I co-founded with Bill Gross of Idealab for Customer Success leaders.
I didn't know any of them. So I followed the voice of the customer, one conversation at a time, then started bringing those leaders together for full-day design-thinking workshops. I called it the CCO Club.
It became our secret strength. Our brand grew well past the size of the company, and people started calling me the community guy of CS in New York. Gainsight acquired UpdateAI in 2025, in large part for the community presence that we built.
[Un]Churned
At UpdateAI, I started a podcast called [Un]Churned. It grew into the leading show in post-sales, with 200 episodes and guests like Fred Reichheld and Geoffrey Moore.
When Nick Mehta, the founder who built Gainsight and defined our category, decided to step down as CEO after 13 years, he chose [Un]Churned to tell the world. He sat down with me and his successor, Chuck Ganapathi.
Watch the episode ↗
Bringing the community with me
When Chuck took over, he asked me to lead Gainsight's customer-facing marketing. So I brought the community with me: customer advocacy, executive engagement, content, social, and field marketing, and the role of chief evangelist -- all as part of my role as SVP of Marketing.
This May, at our annual Pulse conference in Las Vegas, I led the keynote fireside chat with Arvind Jain, founder and CEO of Glean, recorded live as an [Un]Churned episode. And on the same stage, I host the Gamechanger Awards, where we celebrate the customers who make our community.
The full circle
This July, the guy who stayed in his seat at the Emmys walked onto the stage at a Claude skills workshop at Convene in Midtown Manhattan, with his dog 🐶 Jackson, to present a Claude skill we built.
I handled the demo. He handled community.
I'm writing my book, The Relational Founder, with Claude as my writing coach, and I built this page and the book's website with Claude too.