My grandfather

The person who shaped me most.

He came from Ripabottoni — a small town in south-central Italy — at 14 years old, with almost nothing. By the time he was opening his own tailoring business on L Street NW in Washington D.C., he had dressed presidents, senators, and three members of the Redskins. Not because he chased those rooms, but because he cared deeply about the work.

Joe Sauro spent 43 years as a tailor in Washington. He measured carefully, refined patiently, and made things that truly fit the person. Precision mattered. Presentation mattered. Relationships mattered. The Washington Post called him D.C.'s power tailor. He would have just called it doing his job well.

Growing up around that shaped things I didn't have words for at the time — the instinct to read a room, to care about detail, to take pride in how something is made and how it makes someone feel. The Italian household rhythm of warmth, hard work, conversation, and quiet elegance wasn't a lesson. It was just the air.

There's a direct line between his work and mine, even if the medium looks different. What I'm drawn to in creative direction — the tactile quality, the intentionality, the idea that something should genuinely fit the person it's made for — traces back to watching him work. Craftsmanship over hype. Relationships over transactions. Building slowly and earning trust through consistency.

Different medium. Same underlying energy.

Roden Crater

On light, silence, and finding your direction.

Junior year of high school, I visited Roden Crater with a friend who happens to be James Turrell's nephew. I didn't go knowing it would change anything. But walking into that environment — the scale, the stillness, the way light behaved like something alive — something shifted. It wasn't like seeing art. It was more like stepping into a completely different way of thinking about space and intention.

The desert stayed with me long after the trip ended. Not as an image but as a feeling. One of those rare moments where your internal world and the world around you suddenly match.

A lot of what shows up in my work now — the earth tones, the restraint, the obsession with atmosphere over noise — traces back to what I felt there. Roden Crater isn't just a place I visited. It's become something closer to a compass point. And James Turrell — the way he builds environments that change perception rather than demand attention — is still one of the clearest articulations of what I'm trying to do in my own work.

More recently that feeling has turned into a direction. Flagstaff, the Crater, the idea of building something slowly and from the ground up — it keeps reappearing. Less like a dream, more like where I'm actually headed.

ASU graduation

Where it all started.

I almost didn't finish. Sophomore year I was close to walking away — two years of gen ed requirements before getting to the actual work felt like the wrong pace for the way my mind moves. I stayed. Looking back I understand it. At the time it just felt like friction.

I ended up on the Dean's List four times and kept a scholarship for all four years — not because the system suddenly made sense, but because I figured out how to work within it while building something else on the side.

What ASU gave me wasn't really the BS in Marketing. It was two educations at once — the formal one, which sharpened how I pitch, communicate, and build relationships. And a quieter one, where I slowly realized I'm not wired for a conventional corporate path.

Instead of rejecting business I started trying to merge it with something that actually meant something. ASU didn't hand me a direction. It helped me rule enough out that I could finally see one.