I first came to New Hampshire in 1979 at the age of 18. I was a hiking guide for the Outing Club of Boston University. I fell in love with the White Mountains and determined someday to live here. While life took me many places in the intervening years, today, I live in Jaffrey, NH. This is my home. My wife, Eleanor, and I bought our old farmhouse in 2012. When I am not doing something for our town, you can usually find me wearing my tool belt, working on our house.

I have always believed strongly in contributing to my community. I am chair of the Jaffrey Conservation Commission and advisor to the Jaffrey Planning Board. I support the Park Theatre in Jaffrey. I framed and hung the big murals, run Open Mic Night, perform, and support performers as the sound engineer. I belong to the Jaffrey-Rindge Rotary and am on the Board of the Cathedral of the Pines. I perform and help support Music at the Museum in Rindge and in the past helped run the Open Mic at the DubHub in Dublin.

I was born in 1961 in Brooklyn, NY. Growing up, my dad was a cook at Howard Johnsons and my mom was a waitress. They were 18 when I was born and neither had finished high school. I had a brother and two sisters within three years. Needless to say, we were not at the top of the economic ladder. We all went to public schools. We all worked hard to get ahead and each of us was successful through education. One sister just retired as a senior executive at the Ginna Nuclear Power Station near Rochester, NY. One sister is a leader in cyber security for the US Department of Energy. My brother is a chip designer in Silicon Valley. I received a Ph.D. from the department of Nuclear Engineering at MIT for working on fusion energy, started three companies and published more than a dozen science textbooks for middle and high school students across the US and internationally. My support for public education comes from my roots. It is how my whole family lifted itself out of poverty.

My family believed in work starting at an early age. I started working roofing and siding when I was 13 and have been fixing houses since I could hold a hammer. I eventually became a teacher, scientist, and entrepreneur. Along the way I have made a living doing many different things. This diverse background helps me understand people from different walks of life. I have been a restaurant cook. I have been a store manager. I have been a carpenter, mechanic, nanny, teacher, and professor. During the 90’s I taught carpentry to voc-ed kids in Cambridge in the morning and I taught physics to MIT kids in the afternoon.

It takes experience, practical-mindedness and realism to understand money, finance and business. These are things I learned by starting and running three small manufacturing and publishing companies in science education. One of my companies, CPO Science, is now a division of Delta Education in Nashua. When times were tough, my employees always got paid. If there was anything left, maybe I got paid. And, sometimes I didn’t. Being responsible means you work for those who depend on you. Responsibility is about serving people, not about being boss.

I understand jobs and how corporate America works. I was an engineer for Eastman Kodak in the 70’s and for Xerox in the 80’s.  I learned both how to both lead and how to work as a team player. I observed first-hand how good intentions can sometimes lead to failure by not keeping an eye on the future.  In the 70’s and 80’s Kodak and Xerox were American tech giants. Today they are business school case studies in how to fail by not looking ahead. Leadership means keeping your eyes on what is coming as well as what is around you.

I have many years of experience finding win-win solutions: negotiating contracts with companies, school districts, state and local governments and even foreign countries. Between 2012 and 2018 I wrote and won more than $1.5 million in grant funding for education in Rhode Island and Maryland.  As chair of the Conservation Commission I work to balance the needs of development against the necessity of protecting our environment. Finding solutions that bridge differences is a needed skill in our State House. We get nowhere by fighting.

I am ready for the next level of serving our community. I work hard. I’m smart. I have experience, and I listen. I want to work for our towns. I want to help us find reasonable solutions. I want to seek reasonable ways to bridge the gaps that divide us from working together.