The person behind the work
The roles that matter most to me are not résumé lines. They are promises I keep through presence, honesty, protection, and growth.
Partnership
When I picture the life ahead, I do not picture an achievement. I picture a life with her.
With Bri, I know what it feels like to be fully seen and still fully chosen. I do not have to hide the parts of me that hurt, pretend I am never afraid, or confuse strength with silence. I can be honest about what I have carried and remain safe in her love. That kind of safety has changed me.
She loves me in details. She remembered that Where the Red Fern Grows mattered to me and found me a copy—a small gift that said, “I know you. What formed you matters to me.” I never want to become so accustomed to that love that I stop recognizing how rare it is.
We spent more than a year choosing one another across distance before blending our lives and families in California. Now we share the ordinary life—work, school, meals, training, laughter, animals, and schedules that rarely cooperate. Loving her has made me more open, tender, and deliberate about how I show up at home. Whatever else I build, the love and home we are building together will remain among the things that matter most to me.
Fatherhood
I am a father of three and part of a blended family. There is no title I carry more seriously. My children do not live at the edge of my ambitions. They are at the center of why any of it matters.
When they are grown, I want them to remember how it felt to be my child: safe, wanted, protected, known, and free to have a childhood. I want them to remember discipline without humiliation, accountability with grace, laughter in hard seasons, and a father who knew when to push and when to sit beside them.
When life becomes frightening or they have made a mistake they cannot undo, I want the instinct beneath every other instinct to be: “Call Dad. Tell him the truth. He will come. We will figure it out together.” Access to my love is not something they can lose.
My responsibility is to give them roots strong enough to feel secure and room wide enough to become themselves. Their lives belong to them, but they will never have to wonder whether their father belongs to them too.
I would give my life for my children without hesitation. The harder promise is to keep living for them—to heal, grow, carry my own crosses, and make sure the burdens and trauma handed to me do not become theirs.
Each chapter changed what responsibility meant to me—and what I believed I could ask of myself next.
U.S. Navy veteran
Before 9/11, military service had never been part of my plan. After the attacks, I enlisted in the United States Navy. The Navy taught me discipline, trust, interdependence, and what leadership means when the stakes are real: accepting responsibility for what happens next.
105 pounds
At 27, I weighed 270 pounds, smoked a pack a day, drank too much, and faced alarming health results. I thought about walking my daughter down the aisle and seeing who she became. I threw away the cigarettes, stopped drinking, and lost 105 pounds in eight months. It was not about appearance. It was a decision to be here.
Before
AfterB.S. · 3.76 GPA · Dean’s List
While working and raising a family, I completed an accelerated bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science and Professional Training with a 3.76 GPA, made the Dean’s List every semester, and graduated on the Dean’s List. Becoming the first person in my family to earn a degree mattered. So did proving that if my name is attached to something, I will earn it.
Chris Bigelow
Sean PreussIronman finisher
I chose an Ironman because I hated cardio and running, had never ridden a road bike on the road, and could not freestyle swim. I learned from zero and kept working after the novelty disappeared. The finish proved what disciplined repetition can build—and reminded me to let difficult accomplishments count.
The moments beneath the milestones
The facts tell you what happened. The moments show you what formed me.
Grandpa Bruce · The name I carry
I carry his name, his lessons, and an obligation to honor both in the way I live.
I changed schools thirteen times while I was growing up. Through all that movement, my Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Sally’s house was the constant. So was he: grounded, capable, and dependable. He taught me that command presence does not come from being loud and that “I don’t know how” is the beginning of the work, not a limitation.
The stability I want my children to feel, the self-command I expect from myself, and my belief that I can learn through hard things all bear his fingerprints.
Stockton to Sacramento · Peace
“Man, Dad, we ain’t got nothing.”
I was seven or eight when my dad ended a relationship and nearly everything in the house left with her. We sat on the carpet in the empty room. He was exhausted, but I never felt fear from him. He answered, “We have peace, son, and you can’t put a price on that.”
I understood him years later, after leaving a life defined by tension and waking in a home that felt peaceful. Peace is not what remains after you have everything. Sometimes it is the thing that makes rebuilding possible.
Strength carries an obligation: protect without controlling, hold a standard without humiliating, remain composed without becoming absent, and make it safer for other people to tell the truth.
Check the ego. Apologize when wrong. Earn respect instead of enforcing fear. Accept responsibility for the example your presence sets.
A man is not defined by how much fear he can create. He is defined by how much safety his presence creates.
Contact
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