The longer version
About Stephen
I started working in marketing at fifteen. Since then, my working life has included an agency, education, a very long walk, several years of travel, and increasingly hands-on work with AI. I’m now based in Curitiba, Brazil.
Search and education
My starting point was marketing and SEO in 2006. I founded my first marketing agency in 2008, and in 2009 began working with experts to develop and market their content. That work brings two questions together: how to reach people, and what to put in front of them.
Marketing and education have remained part of my working life even as the tools and settings have changed. Earlier work also included political digital campaigns, Artapreneurs Summit, and podcasting with Backpack Entrepreneurs.
Florida to Washington, on foot
In 2013, I set out from Florida on a solo walk across America for the Ekal Foundation, supporting rural education in India. The journey continued into 2014 and covered approximately 4,600 miles to Washington State. There was no follow car.
In July 2014, Mark C. Anderson of Monterey County Weekly described my arrival from Big Sur pulling an ice chest and backpack on a sled made from PVC pipe and a dolly. His story covers food and carrying weight, alongside a night of high winds in the Guadalupe Mountains.
The Times-Standard’s August 2014 account describes my progress through Northern California and people offering somewhere to stay along the way. I traveled solo, with help and hospitality along the route.
The walk also appeared in The Indian Panorama’s coverage of Ekal fundraising events, and I later shared a story on Story Jam Theatre. Links to the coverage and episode page are below.
Travel and AI
From 2014 to 2019, I traveled full time through more than twenty countries while podcasting, speaking, and consulting with startups. I was a cohost of the Backpack Entrepreneurs podcast, as the Story Jam episode notes also record.
I began building with AI in 2018 through chatbots for marketing funnels. I had early GPT-3 access in 2020. Around 2022, I was Chief Strategy Officer at Horizon AI, an enterprise AI education and development consultancy working in sectors including civil engineering, law, and aerospace.
Today, my flagship project is Constellation, a system I authored to coordinate AI coding agents and put verification between an objective and a claim of completion. My other projects and applied work include an environmental dashboard, e-commerce tooling, and model evaluation studies.
Where I am now
I’m an American expat in Curitiba, learning Portuguese. My current roles are Marketing Director, ShoeRepairGlue.com; Worker-member, Carth & Co; and Owner, Infinite Game, LLC.
Those roles cover different kinds of responsibility: marketing across Amazon and Shopify, remote administration for a worker-owned manufacturing cooperative, and ownership of an AI and business development consultancy and education company that is currently quiet. Ventures has the details; Now is the dated snapshot.
How I approach work
Systems over willpower
I’m publicly open about being AuDHD. My approach favors humane systems: clear next steps, visible context, and fewer things that have to be remembered at exactly the right moment.
A sustainable pace
I value work that can be continued, understood, and maintained. Sustainable pace means leaving room for the checking, documentation, and ordinary administration that make a project usable beyond its most exciting day.
AI workflows with something to inspect
AI can generate a great deal of activity. I want the work to leave something clearer behind: a program that has been tested, an output that can be compared, or a decision with its assumptions visible. Constellation’s file queues and verification gates are one concrete expression of that approach.
A concise timeline
- 2006
- Started in marketing and SEO at age fifteen.
- 2008-2009
- Founded my first marketing agency, then began developing and marketing expert content.
- 2013-2014
- Walked approximately 4,600 miles solo from Florida to Washington State for the Ekal Foundation, with no follow car.
- 2014-2019
- Traveled full time through more than twenty countries; podcasting, speaking, and startup consulting.
- 2018
- Began building AI chatbots for marketing funnels.
- 2020
- Received early GPT-3 access.
- Around 2022
- Chief Strategy Officer at Horizon AI.
- Now
- Based in Curitiba, Brazil; working across marketing, cooperative membership, AI projects, and writing.
Coverage and a story from the road
- Monterey County Weekly: Nutrition and near-death accompany a trek from Florida to Cali by foot, July 10, 2014.
- Times-Standard: One man’s journey, August 30, 2014.
- The Indian Panorama: Ekal Vidyalaya event coverage, May 2, 2014. The headline total is for New Jersey fundraising concerts, not my walk.
- Story Jam Theatre: Walking Through the Bayou, episode SJTBE34.