Forming Lithic Ventures:
Purpose, Aspirations, Competencies, and Experience
The core energy of this firm is cultivating and charging ideas and projects with desire, willpower, steadfastness, and creativity in a cooperative effort with clients. I provide a unique offering within the advocacy family because that is who I am: a multidimensional professional, master planner, and collaborator with a rare blend of guidance, know-how, and vision rooted in diverse lived experience.
I explore limitless potential on behalf of clients, integrating legal and creative counseling into inspired development in an immersive all-in-one approach with businesses, nonprofits, and individuals to facilitate growth and reinvention, plan endeavors, provide organizational support, and more.
My services include:
1. Idea excavation, workshopping, and cultivation
2. Legal representation, counseling, and strategy
3. Grounding creative vision into reality
4. Issue spotting and foundational building block laying
5. Waypoint setting and long range growth planning
6. Resource sharing
7. Project team building, development and management
8. Guided immersion to extend possibilities, gather and reveal hidden connections, and more fully express brand story and meaning through imagery, art, and analysis
9. Responsible, constructive dispute resolution
10. Life path advocacy
While I offer legal services for clients across several practice areas, I passionately pour ride-or-die support into depth projects which require long-range constancy, facilitated exploration, and bold authentic expression toward beneficial goals.
My professional point of origin was as a field geologist investigating environmentally impacted sites in the midwest at a global firm specializing in environmental protection, social responsibility, and regulatory compliance. Geology led to the practice of law at a major US firm, where I specialized in environmental law, commercial litigation, and administrative law. This background was beneficial in transitioning into the hospitality industry with the establishment of Ermanos, a restaurant on Historic Fourth Avenue in Tucson, Arizona which opened in 2015.
In building Ermanos, the goal was to create a welcoming home away from home to nourish guests regardless of the occasion, addressing the growing need for quality communal spaces. Portal Cocktails later opened in 2020. It was designed to be an intimate and exciting refuge, and opened the gates for me to dive headfirst into the art of delivering a rich sensorial experience in the realm of hospitality. I believe in vibrant and evocative placemaking with a strong heartbeat, and I design and build with care from original source material. Through these efforts, I have become fluent and kindled a fervor for brand development and storytelling.
The establishments ended their run in 2025, receiving numerous accolades along the way, including Portal being internationally recognized for its original design and concept and nominated as a finalist for best Surface Interior, Lighting and Standalone Concept in North America. But recognition was not the intention; Ermanos and Portal were proud endeavors to serve as reliable, safe, feel-good, go-to spots for any night out, where friends connected, future spouses met, and community flourished.
During this time, I began understanding the roots of genuine hospitality and the crucial importance of communal third-placemaking in this modern era of stress (where, for many of us, wellness — finding ease and balance — is difficult or out of reach). From this realization, project ALIGN was born: a mixed-used environment intended to facilitate human connection at the intersection of play-centered design, flow state, and spiritual third placemaking.
Currently in planning, the 7-acre ground-up project is a public-private partnership between Pima County and Infinite Concepts, where I serve as founder, creative director, and general counsel. The site, surrounded by arroyos with sweeping mountain views, is located on the award-winning Huckelberry Loop. The ALIGN team’s wellness and Loop-focused proposal was selected in a competitive public request for proposals for the right to develop and steward the Rillito-front property. The environment, when built, will offer an inclusive space of warmhearted hospitality whose quality catalyzes peak joy, creative expression, reflection, movement, and ultimately individual and communal well being.
I enjoy movement, art, road trips, rocks, sharing special lookouts with friends, writing, advocacy, communal building, long-range projects, and ancient gathering places.
I work with a team of experienced and talented professionals tailored to support clients across a broad range from process through intended goals. If you’d like to discuss working together, please reach out. I’d be happy to listen and speak with you.
