My Own Odyssey
“A journey is a person itself; no two are alike.”
— John Steinbeck
Not many people develop both breadth and depth in their careers. Most who try many things never dive deep enough to develop true expertise. Those who stay focused on a single path operate with fewer tools in their toolbox.
I’ve been told — consistently — that I’m an exception.
I started building digital products before most companies had a product team. At 10up, I led cross-functional teams delivering enterprise-scale platforms for clients like Motortrend (Webby Award winner) and Beasley Media Group — custom infrastructure, complex migrations, and performance-critical applications. I also led a data and analytics practice advising companies including Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Starbucks on how to turn product data into decisions.
I went in-house at Automattic — the company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce — because I wanted to own the product end-to-end. I led the creation of Woo Express, a managed e-commerce platform built on open source software that required coordinating multiple teams across business units — from architecture through onboarding to pricing and packaging. I also took Blaze from proof of concept to a fully integrated ad platform within the WordPress.com ecosystem, owning the product experience and cross-functional delivery.
Then I went deep on AI. At Engineered Innovation Group, I built Luster.ai — a voice-to-voice AI sales simulation platform — from zero to a marketable demo in six weeks. That experience confirmed what I already suspected: AI isn’t just another feature category. It’s a fundamentally different way to build products.
Today, I’m Head of Product and AI at David’s Bridal, where I lead Pearl Planner — an AI-native wedding planning platform built on knowledge graph architecture, agentic AI, and multiple specialized LLMs. Pearl Planner has been featured in VentureBeat, Fortune, Retail Dive, and Chain Store Age. I also built Wedding Color Studio (colors.davidsbridal.com) — an AI-powered color palette tool — by myself, from design to deployed code.
Skills
Build
Knowledge Graph Architecture
LLM Orchestration & Agentic Systems
AI UX & Interaction Design
Prompt Engineering & MCP Infrastructure
Non-Deterministic Testing & Evals
Lead
0→1 Product Builds
Cross-Functional & Distributed Teams
Organizational Design for AI
Technical Product Strategy
Leader Who Builds
Ship
System Architecture Decisions
Go-to-Market & Launch
Data-Informed Iteration
Roadmap Prioritization
Stakeholder Narrative & Alignment
Recent Accomplishments
Role: Head of Product & AI
Company: David’s Bridal
Pearl Planner — AI-Native Wedding Planning
Accomplishments
- Designed and shipped an AI-native platform built on Neo4j knowledge graph architecture — not RAG.
- Multiple specialized LLMs with agentic orchestration and function calling.
- Vision analysis pipeline for wedding inspiration photos.
- Featured in VentureBeat, Fortune, Retail Dive, and Chain Store Age.
Wedding Color Studio
I designed, coded, and shipped this myself. An AI-powered tool that helps brides build wedding color palettes and generates mood boards — 64 curated swatches, full-stack, production, live at colors.davidsbridal.com.
This is what I mean when I say product leaders shouldn’t hand off the work. I saw an opportunity, designed the UX, wrote the code, and deployed it — while simultaneously leading the Pearl Planner team. Most product leaders at my level haven’t written production code in years. I think that’s a mistake.
Luster.ai — 0 to 1 AI Build
Voice-to-voice AI sales simulation platform. LLM-powered cold call practice with multiple personas. Marketable demo in 6 weeks. Advanced prompt engineering, microservices architecture, WorkOS integration.
Blaze Ad Platform & Woo Express
Blaze Ad Platform: Took a proof of concept and integrated it into the WordPress.com ecosystem. Owned the product experience, launch marketing, and adoption strategy. Became WordPress.com’s leading revenue source with 2X month-over-month growth.
Woo Express: Led multiple cross-discipline teams across business units to create a managed e-commerce platform built on open source software. End-to-end product build from onboarding through launch, driving 8X new user acquisition.
What I Do Best
- Build AI products that ship — not prototypes that demo.
- Lead teams across disciplines — and contribute directly alongside them.
- Make architecture and organizational decisions that compound over time.
- Write about what I learn — and build tools with what I write about.