At work

I’m looking for my next full-time leadership role, bringing together commercial strategy, consumer insights, and analytics. Most recently, I spent two years leading business intelligence and insights at Carbone Fine Food, building the function as the company grew 3x in that short period of time. My work spanned pricing, promotion effectiveness, consumer research, and portfolio strategy — helping the team understand what drives purchases and what that means for the business.

I’m particularly interested in opportunities where understanding consumers informs decisions about pricing, products, and growth. I enjoy connecting those questions across sales, marketing, and finance, and building an analytics function that helps people make better decisions.

One topic that I had been thinking about recently: Exploring how AI can help make research findings easier to collect, connect, and reuse. Too often, useful insights live in a presentation, an email, or someone’s memory. I’m interested in making that knowledge more accessible so it can inform decisions well beyond the project that produced it.

Writing and thinking

I recently published “The Attribute Packing Trap” in my Shelf Talk newsletter. It examines a pattern I’ve seen across consumer research projects: brands keep adding product claims, but consumers don’t necessarily assign them the value the brand expects. Sometimes, trust in the brand matters more than another attribute on the package.

I’m still thinking about the K-shaped economy and how different household circumstances shape what value means in the grocery aisle. I discussed that topic on the Nombase podcast with Jeff Lovering.

Other writing in progress includes how household purchasing changes when people start and stop GLP-1 medications, and how my early experiences in my family’s business, Bosco, shaped my thinking about work and management. That second topic feels particularly timely.

Outside work

The kids are in seventh and third grade, and we’re working through the fall mix of school schedules and activities.

The High Holidays have passed, but I’m carrying some of that reflection into October. I’m not especially observant, but I value taking time to look back, make amends, and consider what I want to do differently. I use 10Q’s daily questions to give that reflection some structure.

Reading: I abandoned Instapaper for Pocket when I was having trouble with the Instapaper–Kindle integration, and then Pocket shut down. I just signed up for Readwise Reader’s paid plan, which includes Kindle integration. I’ve been happy to read clipped articles on my Kindle again, and it’s a very sharp app.

Let’s connect

Dan Pink says: “Research shows we systematically overestimate the awkwardness and underestimate the happiness that reconnection brings.” I try to keep in touch with people who have been part of my life, and I welcome reconnecting. I just spent the weekend with a college friend who I haven’t seen in a long time which was amazing.

Email or text me if you have my information, or find me on LinkedIn.

Tools

These are some of the tools to make work and life a little easier for me. Many are Chrome extensions.

Calendaring
- Checker Plus for Google Calendar: Pops up reminders about upcoming meetings and allows me to snooze them flexibly.
- Don’t Double Book Me: Possibly my most useful tool. Syncs my work and personal calendars. Does exactly what I need. It blocks off my work calendar when I have personal commitments without exposing my appointment details. And the developer actually responds when there have been issues. ($20/year)
- Merge Calendar Events: When viewing Google calendars that have the same events, such as coworkers or when viewing my work and personal calendars at the same time, it merges the duplicate events into one block to make the calendars easier to read.
Gmass: For sending my Shelf Talk newsletter natively through Gmail. (Paid service; affiliate link.)
Fix Contrast: I have trouble seeing content when color contrast isn’t strong enough. This fixes it.
Momentum: Pleasing start pages for new Chrome tabs.
Granola: AI notetaking that doesn’t send annoying bots into my online meetings. (Paid and free tiers; link provides 2 months free.)
Awesome Screenshot
Bitwarden: Simple password manager that works great. I switched from LastPass after a 2022 security breach and after they made changes to the app for the worse. Free and paid tiers.
Recipe Filter: You know how recipe pages have lots of narrative before the actual recipe? This skips all that and automatically shows you just the recipe itself.