The thread is throughput

I started in public accounting in 2004 and moved into internal audit in capital markets three years later. Since 2011 I have worked in counterparty credit risk, and since 2020 I have led it — monitoring multi-billion-dollar exposure to the mortgage insurers, reinsurers, property insurers, and title insurers a large financial institution depends on, with a team of four. Earlier, I covered large international banks through the financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis.

Before any of that: the full International Baccalaureate programme, then two complete bachelor’s degrees at Virginia Tech — accounting and finance, two degrees rather than a double major — finished in three years. Then an M.S. in Finance at American University, and over the years since, four professional designations: CPA, CFA, FRM, and CIA. Individually none of them is rare. Together they are uncommon, and earning all four while working is mostly a question of throughput.

That is the thread. More than a hundred nonfiction books, four designations, a book of my own distilled from the productivity literature, and now about a dozen production AI systems — the same appetite for taking in a great deal and turning it into something that runs.

I have been to dozens of countries and all seven continents.