Your Guide
Thirty years of finding my own way. Now I walk the first miles with other people.
SECTION 1 — THE ROAD
I've spent my life as a vagabond: learning, exploring, finding my own way. For twenty years I forged an experience-driven path through the world, delving into the depths, scrambling to new heights, immersing myself in local cultures wherever I landed, always after the authentic version of a place rather than the advertised one.
In 2013 I launched The Vagabond Chef as a culinary travel blog and put thirteen thousand miles on my motorcycle in a single year, sitting down with more than sixty people in the culinary community. I asked them what they were doing, how they were doing it, and why they did it that way. I learned more in that year than in any decade before it.
I've also been genuinely lost out there. Some of the mistakes were nearly fatal. Every one of them taught me something about taking a bearing that no book could have.
SECTION 2 — THE KITCHEN
SECTION 2 — THE KITCHEN
In 2014 I opened my own restaurant in the heart of downtown Wheeling, West Virginia. Like a lot of rust belt towns, Wheeling has been fighting to redefine itself, and as a prodigal son, being part of that fight matters to me. Vagabond Kitchen has clambered through challenge after challenge to keep the doors open and serve handcrafted food rooted in this community.
Eleven years of ownership teaches you things a seminar can't: payroll during a bad month, leading people who are tired, rebuilding a plan when the one you had stops working. Burnout isn't theoretical to me. I've been all the way into it and back out.
Alongside that, I've been deeply involved with the National Restaurant Association Education Foundation's ProStart program, working with students across West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and judging at the national level beside some of the best culinary professionals in the world. Most recently I've taken on the role of Executive Chef for West Virginia State Parks, leading teams and shaping culinary experiences across the mountain state.
In 2014 I opened my own restaurant in the heart of downtown Wheeling, West Virginia. Like a lot of rust belt towns, Wheeling has been fighting to redefine itself, and as a prodigal son, being part of that fight matters to me. Vagabond Kitchen has clambered through challenge after challenge to keep the doors open and serve handcrafted food rooted in this community.
Eleven years of ownership teaches you things a seminar can't: payroll during a bad month, leading people who are tired, rebuilding a plan when the one you had stops working. Burnout isn't theoretical to me. I've been all the way into it and back out.
Alongside that, I've been deeply involved with the National Restaurant Association Education Foundation's ProStart program, working with students across West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and judging at the national level beside some of the best culinary professionals in the world. Most recently I've taken on the role of Executive Chef for West Virginia State Parks, leading teams and shaping culinary experiences across the mountain state.
SECTION 3 — THE PRACTICE
I'm a certified coach, trained and credentialed through Novellus Global and the International Coaching Federation. That training gave structure to something I'd been doing informally for years: sitting across from someone at the hard part of their journey and helping them find their own way through.
The Compass came out of both halves, the roads and the kitchens. It's not borrowed theory. It's the instrument I built to navigate my own life, refined over thirty years and now shared with people navigating theirs.
I work with leaders, owners, and builders. People carrying more than one life at once. I won't hand you my map. I'll teach you to draw your own, and walk the first miles alongside.