I’ve spent twenty years designing the conditions that change how people perform.
Co-Founder & CEO, Highwire — Applied human performance & behavior change.
Practitioner-researcher in deliberate practice, feedback design, and performance under pressure.
The human questions live in that gap: why keep going when it’s frustrating, how feedback should work, what happens after failure, how to make progress visible enough to sustain it.
That gap — between discovery and adoption — is where I’ve spent my career.
I’ve been obsessed with what drives human performance since I was nineteen — because it started with my own. I was a struggling student with learning challenges and test-anxiety, until a series of family tragedies left me no choice but to adapt. I worked multiple jobs, took on more credits than I thought I could handle, and graduated early with the best grades of my life. I was fascinated by my transformation and wanted to understand it.
I got that chance as the third employee at Knopman Marks, on the other side of the thing I’d dreaded most. I got to investigate questions such as: how do you motivate someone who’s already convinced they’re bad at this? How do you make learning stick? How do you change not just what someone knows, but how they perform when it counts? That company became my laboratory and where I fell in love with building — we’ve grown the business more than 10× since I joined, including doubling it twice since I became CEO in 2019.
Twenty years, one real-world laboratory.
I didn’t set out to study human performance. I set out to help people pass high-stakes exams as the third employee at Knopman Marks.
What I got was a front-row seat to hundreds of thousands of people attempting something consequential: learning, struggling, failing, adapting, and eventually performing when the result mattered.
Over time, I became less interested in simply what people needed to learn, and increasingly fascinated by what actually caused them to become capable. That fascination drove us to become the gold standard for licensing exams across Wall Street.
Test. Measure. Improve.
Everything we build is outcomes-driven. We measure before and after, then systematically refine the program based on what the data shows — that discipline is why our pass rates lead the industry.
Here’s one example, from a multi-year program with a single client firm: we tracked licensing completion by week of training, year over year, and adjusted the curriculum based on what we saw.
In Year 1, candidates reached 87% licensing completion by Week 20. After we adjusted the program, candidates reached that same completion rate by Week 12 in Year 3 — eight weeks faster.
Practice. Pressure. Feedback. Adaptation.
Knowing what to do and being able to do it when it matters are different capabilities.
We become ready through experience: attempting difficult things, receiving useful feedback, adjusting, and trying again under progressively more realistic conditions.
That’s the idea underneath nearly everything I build.
Performance Conditioning for Leaders
At Knopman Marks, I spent two decades proving a simple idea: people get better at high-stakes performance the same way athletes do — through deliberate practice, live pressure, and real feedback, not passive instruction.
Highwire takes that proven approach and brings it to a bigger stage: the tough conversation, the high-stakes pitch, the decision made under pressure — the moments that define leadership.
We call it performance conditioning.
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Same rigor, real time.
One recent engagement: a half-day communication lab for emerging analysts at a leading global investment bank. Participants self-assessed before and after, on a 1–5 scale.
Six ideas I lean on constantly.
None of this is original to me — it’s decades of behavioral science, simplified into the shape I actually use it in the room. Here’s the short version of what I return to, and how it shows up in the work.
The Flow Channel
When challenge and skill are matched, focus sharpens and effort feels almost effortless. Too much challenge for the skill and people freeze; too little and they check out.
The Competence–Confidence Loop
Confidence isn’t a mindset you access — it’s a byproduct of competence, and competence is built in cycles: attempt, get real feedback, adjust, repeat.
Zones of Growth
Real learning happens just outside comfort — close enough to be reachable with support, not so far outside it that performance shuts down.
Stress Inoculation
Controlled, graduated exposure to pressure — not avoidance of it — is what builds the capacity to perform when real pressure hits.
Deliberate Practice
Hours alone don’t build skill. What matters is a specific goal, full focus, feedback in the moment, and repetition aimed at the actual weak point.
The Yerkes–Dodson Law
Too little pressure and performance stays flat. Too much and it collapses. Peak performance lives in a narrow band in between.
Humans are extraordinarily adaptable. I’m on a mission to help people grow through challenge and go further than they think they can.
Press & Speaking
For journalists covering the future of work, human performance, and AI’s effect on skills, and for select keynote and panel engagements.
Press & speaking inquiry →Advisory & Board
For organizations building serious work in human performance, behavior change, or workforce capability who could use a practitioner’s perspective.
Advisory inquiry →