The ADC Festival was my answer to the ‘marketization’ of the ad industry awards show. The festival was unlike any other in the world and centered around art, craft and true creativity. World-class speakers included architects, artists, dancers, and even lego builders. Workshops included sand-castle design, guitar-making, graffiti, and even food design.

Troubardour is a bean for coffee lovers. Our single-origin, shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee gets made with love and intention at high altitude in our little farm in the mountains of Costa Rica. We sing to our plants, we put crystals in the ground, and we practice regenerative agriculture. If inspiration and energy is what you seek, come taste the best Costa Rican coffee. www.troubardour.com

The Dreamcatchers is a very unique travel company that I started in 2017 and which takes guests on blind-itinerary adventure travels in Costa Rica. My trips are about trust and about experiencing the ultimate present moment. Only I know the itinerary of the week so my guests are forced to turn off their minds and simply enjoy all the beautiful places and experiences I take them to.

Over the last two decades I've been responsible for the design, creation, development and growth of global events ranging from workshops, conferences, festivals, parties, talks, movie festivals, technological demos, and networking get-togethers. I have a passion for connecting people through inspiring, memorable and unique events. My events have taken place in all continents of the world and have been attended by tens of thousands of people.

Unique problems call for unique solutions. Laser Cat was one of the funnest projects I've ever worked on. To bring back the art in advertising I commissioned a three-story tall inflatable cat art street party installation that toured Barcelona, Brooklyn, D.C. and Miami Beach. Laser Cat projected visual art submitted by people all over the world in the form of a wild interactive party. It even performed live with world-class musical act Thievery Corporation.

At its core, Portfolio Night is an event where aspiring young advertising copywriters, art directors and designers meet with several renowned advertising creative directors in a fast-paced evening of advice, networking and recruitment. Portfolio Night was born in 2003 and has since become the most important advertising talent event in the world. To date, over 70 cities in every single continent have hosted the event which has garnered over 10,000 participants. Portfolio Night has been sponsored by major players like Microsoft, Adobe, Google and Spotify.

ADC is the oldest advertising and design club in the world and the first advertising and design awards in the business. I took on the job of Executive Director in 2013 with the mission of giving the ADC awards a new direction and life. To take it forward I decided to take it backwards to its original credo as the premiere showcase of art & craft around the world.

The creation of engaging, thought-provoking, high quality content has been the core of my career since 2001. The end result has been thousands of content pieces in virtually all types of mediums ranging from iPad and iPhone apps, digital videos, online games, online media publishing to magazines, documentaries and books.

Over the years I’ve led the creation of digital video content ranging from inspiring educational videos to full documentaries. Here are some samples.

Giant Hydra is a mass collaboration creative online platform that I designed and developed with the goal of drastically evolving the advertising creative model.

The system takes the traditional agency creative process and mashes it with the power of the web, utilizing a vast internal network of creatives around the world to take ideation and collaboration to a new level that wasn’t possible before. What took agencies weeks and hundreds of thousands of dollars could be done by Giant Hydra in days and for a fraction of the price. 

Agencies like TBWA, Ogilvy, and BBDO as well as clients like Sony, Condé Nast used Giant Hydra with massive success.

The ad industry had always been notoriously imbalanced when it came to picking judges to judge major award shows despite the abundance of great women rising up the ranks. In 2013 I decided to change this and in less than 10 days launched the 50/50 Initiative, which was designed to force a hand on all the major award shows and encourage a more balanced split of men and women in juries across the board around the world.

In its first few months I convinced every single award show in Canada to join and a few of the major ones in the US including the Clio Awards and Andy Awards. Nowadays, the effect of this initiative can be seen in the recent changes implemented by all the other major award shows.

Troubardour went from a dream in my head to reality in less than 11 months.

The idea behind this project was to create the ultimate cocktail bar experience. Troubardour is a hand-made piece of art that is essentially a portable night club complete with lights, smoke machine, lasers, projectors, an outdoor music sound system and the ultimate cocktail bar. When I perform, I make hand-made cocktails from the freshest ingredients while playing music, projecting motion art and putting on a light-show. Troubardour is currently in Costa Rica.

The Tomorrow Awards was an international award show dedicated to discovering, showcasing and awarding creativity that pushed the boundaries of technological innovation. Founded in 2010, the awards quickly become a bellwether of change in the creative communications industries.

What made the Tomorrow Awards unique among other awards and honors is that there were no categories, a first in the industry. It was “big idea” vs. “big idea”— where a tiny digital startup or creative entrepreneur shared space with some of the world’s biggest agencies and tech giants.

Today, I’m Brave is a fiscally sponsored nonprofit whose mission is to inspire individuals and organizations through Brave initiatives and by sharing Brave stories. Because the braver we are, the more fear we can conquer. And when we conquer fear, we can accomplish anything, and, together, create positive change around the world.

In 2015 I served as team leader for Today I’m Brave. We created amazing content, developed a social media content campaign, produced several events and set the stage for the future of Today I’m Brave.