I grew up in a household with two lawyer parents. Arguing and debating for sport was a pastime for my siblings and me. And you can’t build a winning argument for an extended curfew on a bed of losing language.

There was also a lot of value placed on puns and wordplay in my family. Learning to always look for ways to be playful within conversation was (and remains) very fun, but it also turned out to be strategically relevant. Shaping the conversation effectively is about messaging and framing, but it’s also a product of packaging it in a memorable way. 

I previously worked at a startup company called StarStock, an online marketplace for sports trading cards that functions as an investment platform. It allows users to trade “stock” in the careers and potentials of individual players by buying and selling their sports cards. 

It was a very dynamic, scrappy experience. Starting as a ten-person team in a three-room office, we expanded into a few spare rooms rented in the temple across the street. When that proved too small to hold the growing team of 60 employees, we moved into what was previously a New York Sports Club (and still had some of its gym equipment). Every day was an adventure.

I got to wear many hats. I was an intern, starstruck by the NBA player in our Slack channel. I was the voice of customer service, a household name among some of our more vocal customers. I coached the company softball team, navigating the politics of constructing a lineup of colleagues who all wanted to play shortstop. By the end, I oversaw a team that processed over a million sports cards – and enjoyed spending my workdays talking sports.

I was a history major at NYU. Beyond learning about the events themselves, I got a better understanding of the extent to which writers and historians shape the narratives of the past. How events are understood depends on how the facts are framed. The tone in which they’re described. What’s elevated and what’s deprioritized.

A friend of mine worked as an intern at m+p and I remember him calling me to describe the work. His lengthy explanation of “Language Strategy” was not all that different from the way I describe it today. It sounded unique but still well within my wheelhouse of storytelling and argument. Another application of the exercise of framing whatever evidence I have at my disposal. It was just a matter of trading events and historical perspectives for proof points mapped against a series of communication challenges.

A day includes jumping from project to project and industry to industry, working on the different phases of research, analysis, and strategy.

But the part of the job I find most energizing happens right after we’ve heard from our audience – when we’re optimizing the “winning” language we’ll ultimately recommend. This is when advocacy and debate over specific wording occurs. What response did this phrase evoke? Did they say they prefer this word? Or did the nature of the conversation clue us in to the type of language that lands best? How does it all come together? Getting a message to land means dissecting it together to pull out the best pieces before reconstructing it in a way that fits best.

The most interesting days have meetings that can span over two hours, in which the output is just a couple of paragraphs. It’s all in the minutia: deliberating the implications of the most specific and seemingly insignificant parts of a conversation. That makes a day.

I’m a big fan of The Postal Service (band) and the postal service (USPS).

They sow love, loathing, and everything in between.