I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada.
I came from a broken home. My father was verbally and physically abusive, and for most of my childhood, fear wasn’t a feeling—it was the air I breathed.
By the time I was eight, while most kids were playing outside, I was working. Full-time summers. March and Christmas breaks. Any time off from school meant working on job sites. My father ran a renovation business, so I spent my childhood inside other people’s homes. It was hard, miserable, and relentless.
But in the middle of that chaos, two things took root: resilience and perspective.
Walking through hundreds of homes, seeing how different families lived, I understood early that life isn’t fixed. It’s a mosaic of choices. And I wanted the freedom to make mine.
That realization shaped everything. It’s why I became an entrepreneur. Because building a business isn’t just about money—it’s about building yourself. It forces courage. It demands growth. It creates independence.
And that was the path I chose.
At first, I thought my life would be music.
I enrolled in audio engineering school, but a year in, I realized it wasn’t my path. What stuck wasn’t the sound—but the world around it. I ran a small music blog that earned me press passes to concerts across Toronto. That’s where I picked up a cheap DSLR and started shooting.
Photography became my first real escape.
I moved from concerts to weddings—because that’s where real stories live. I interned with photographers, learned the craft, and built The Mariner Agency. Over the next decade, I shot more than 400 weddings around the world. But they weren’t just jobs—they were portals into people’s lives.
Standing behind the camera, I saw love, chaos, beauty, and everything in between. Those years didn’t just shape my career. They shaped how I saw the world.
During those same years behind the camera, I started sidequest maxxing and returned to music. However this time as an artist manager.
I co-founded NST with my partner, Photo Will, in Toronto. For six years, we lived and breathed music—late nights, rehearsals, releases, and tours. Together, we helped launch artists who went platinum and sold out thousand-person venues.
But it wasn’t just about building careers. It was about building movements. Those years taught me how energy scales when it’s aimed at something real. I walked away with new skills, new relationships, and a sharper sense of what it takes to turn vision into impact.