Follow the Feeling

INTRODUCTION

For the past decade, I've roamed the halls of Columbia University—first as a graduate student studying communication and then as a lecturer. Before, I studied economics at the University of Chicago. After graduating, I worked as an advisor to Fortune 100 clients and startups. Through high-profile projects across advertising, PR, and media, I've navigated the landscape of hacking, hijacking, and steering hearts and minds. Influence … ish. In academic speak: applying principles of persuasion.

My journey as an intellectual misfit started abroad in my youth. My father and mother met in the military, and eventually, our family ended up in Germany. Coming back to the United States, strangely, I was a foreigner. Caught between languages and customs, every interaction with the world spawned a dozen questions. Identified as gifted, I was taught to untangle physical and mental puzzles through observation and question asking.

While a love of science may not be the coolest thing to talk about among friends more interested in playing sports, it nonetheless still teaches a lifelong lesson on how to apply research methods, interpret data, and extract meaning from disjointed variables. When your entrepreneurial spirit pushes you to do things others consider “too risky” for their liking, then you learn to live peacefully in a reality of change that others find daunting and uncomfortable. And when your military parents raise you in Germany and you've hit 20 countries by the time ...