Maria Popova calls cynicism “that terrible habit of mind and orientation of spirit in which, out of hopelessness for our own situation, we grow embittered about how things are and about what’s possible in the world.” She says cynicism is “a poverty of curiosity and imagination and ambition.”

Everything I do fights that poverty.

The Pattern

At thirteen, I wanted to live in Germany. At seventeen, Scotland. Senior year of high school, I went to France and Spain and something shifted. I realized I needed to keep moving, keep exploring, keep connecting.

I started at community college, where I had the freedom to explore before committing to a direction. I took courses across the sciences—biology, geology, environmental science—alongside art history and the humanities. During those two years, I spent days puzzling over the Fermi paradox, stared at a factory smokestack near my house and saw Giorgio de Chirico paintings, and got scolded by a geography professor one cold winter morning because our entire class had missed the vibrant sun dogs arcing across the sky.

I was fascinated by big, earth-shattering ideas but couldn’t decide what I wanted to study. I initially thought International Studies, but that shifted over time. The experience of exploring options without pressure to specialize shaped how I think about learning—it’s not a linear path toward a predetermined end, but a process of discovery that requires space to breathe.

After community college, I spent two years in Indianapolis, where I studied at Butler University completing my BA in history with a French minor. The pace was intense—I raced through the degree while working at the university library and participating in the Butler Summer Institute, where I conducted archival research on European perceptions of the South Pacific using the William F. Charters South Seas Collection. That summer immersion in primary sources—18th and 19th century novels, memoirs, missionary records, and explorer diaries—taught me how to work with historical materials and think critically about how narratives get constructed.

Then came eight years at Northeastern University for my MA and doctoral work, the time split between New England, France, and Tunisia. During this period, I created comprehensive reading lists spanning multiple geographic fields; but, more importantly, I read them. I read widely across the humanities and social sciences. I learned to work across archives in multiple languages, tracking how fascist networks moved between Tunisia, France, and Italy in the 1930s. I examined demographic engineering, propaganda, police surveillance—how colonial administrators tried to contain ethnic conflict and how informal networks operated when formal institutions failed. The work was never just managing logistics or conducting research, it was pattern recognition across scattered sources that didn’t want to talk to each other.

The Friction of Change

Years of living and working across different political and cultural worlds taught me that most frameworks only make sense where they were born; real understanding begins when they stop working.

During that time, I learned Arabic—not just Modern Standard but Tunisian, the language people actually speak. I got engaged to my fiancée. I built a life, navigated bureaucracy, argued about politics, celebrated holidays, and dealt with the realities of everyday life.

I became a sponge, absorbing perspectives and ways of seeing that people took as second nature but felt revelatory to me. Living there taught me what embodied cross-cultural fluency actually means. It’s not about speaking languages or knowing customs. It’s about letting your frameworks get challenged, recognizing when your assumptions don’t apply, and building genuine relationships.

The experience taught me that place shapes you if you let it; living somewhere means more than being physically present. It means allowing the place to reshape how you think.

Return to the Midwest

I’m back in my Illinois hometown now—the place I couldn’t wait to leave. I’m the youngest volunteer at the historical society by four decades. I substitute teach. I volunteer on Saturdays at a crisis center. I joined Toastmasters, a book club, and a writers’ group. I help teenagers at a community center develop into their fullest selves.

This shift represents reorientation, not retreat. Meaningful work doesn’t always arrive through job postings. Sometimes you build it yourself while preparing for what’s next. Service looks the same everywhere once you understand this: showing up for communities, listening carefully, contributing where you can–that matters, regardless of geography.

Now, I’m thinking seasonally rather than in productivity cycles. Winter is for service, organization, recovery, and connection. In spring, my attention shifts toward making—ceramics, intentional cooking, time outdoors. Summer brings exploration—Chicago, new landscapes, different rhythms. Autumn is for harvest and integration. It’s more humane than optimizing yourself into exhaustion.

What Drives Me

I refuse cynicism. I’m not naive about human failure—I’ve spent years studying fascism, empire, and structural violence. Even so, cynicism is the ultimate failure of imagination. It’s giving up on the possibility that understanding matters.

I believe organizations thrive when knowledge flows across boundaries; when diverse perspectives actually converge, rather than performing diversity; when complexity gets honored instead of flattened; when wonder drives the work.

I’m not trying to fit into a professional category. I’m a perpetual student who considers himself Tunisian despite being born in Illinois, who reads Sufi philosophy and organizational theory as part of the same project, who takes seasonal rhythms as seriously as strategic planning.

I don’t compartmentalize.

Every project I’ve led—seminars, conferences, digital platforms—asks the same question: How do we create clarity without simplification? How do we make complexity click?

What I Read

I maintain an extensive reading list because reading is thinking. Organizational theory and mysticism. Neuroscience and folk horror. Political economy and speculative fiction. I don’t separate these because reality doesn’t separate them.

Books serve as tools for seeing more clearly, but they require deliberation and care. They can be wielded wisely or used as escape hatches from engagement. I’m interested in the former.

The Practice of Technics

I don’t just theorize about systems—I build them. This website represents that commitment: I designed and built it from scratch using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Hugo templating. I’ve produced podcasts, managed digital archives, created databases tracking organizational history back decades, and cataloged library collections while designing information architectures that make knowledge accessible.

Technology is a tool, and tools serve the purposes we set for them. Lewis Mumford writes in Technics and Civilization about how technology has traditionally been used for war and exploitation. I’m interested in different applications—using technology to help humankind flourish, to build systems that honor human dignity, and to create infrastructure that serves rather than controls.

I approach technology attentively and with care. I’m a digital minimalist who stays away from social media while still commanding serious technical skills. The humanities and technical work are part of the same practice: taking what’s scattered and making it comprehensible, making it work, making it last.

Connection & Care

Much of my research and teaching has been solitary work, but what matters most to me happens in relationship with others. I’ve learned—often the hard way—that understanding is inseparable from care, and that people do their best work when they’re met with patience, respect, and good faith.

This isn’t a “soft” value. It’s a demanding one. It requires attention, humility, and the willingness to stay present when things get uncomfortable. But it’s the only way I know to create clarity without erasing people in the process.

What This Comes To

For a decade, I’ve been building a practice of synthesis, translation, and system-building across research, teaching, program coordination, and organizational work. I recognize patterns across domains, navigate ambiguity without losing coherence, translate between worlds without betraying either. I create environments where understanding becomes possible, where scattered information coheres into insight, where complexity clicks.

This work spans across all aspects of my life. It happens wherever deep understanding, cultural fluency, and systems thinking create genuine impact. Wherever wonder isn’t a luxury but the point.

Curious about my professional background? Check the work page. Want to talk? Reach out. I’d genuinely love to hear from you.