My Story

Want to know how a kid who never had one hometown ended up building a 24-year career and a life in Philadelphia? Here’s the full story.

I did not grow up with a hometown. Ask me where I’m from, and I still have to think about it for a second.

My dad was in the Army, so we moved every few years, Tallahassee, Panama, Georgia, Germany, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia. I was always the new kid, always starting over, always leaving friendships right as they were becoming real. It made me a little more introverted. It also taught me something I didn’t understand until much later: home isn’t a place you’re born into. It’s a place you choose, and choose again.

My dad retired after 20 years of service. Just a few years later, when I was 13, he passed away. Losing him that young reshaped our family in ways I’m still making sense of, and it meant the moving didn’t really stop, it just changed shape. Instead of following his next assignment, we were figuring out where home was without him.

By the time I finished high school, I’d lived in more states than most people visit in a lifetime. My mom and sister eventually settled in Philadelphia in the early 90s, while I chased something different, a career in art, first in Norfolk, Virginia, then, when I was ready to bet on myself, New York City.

Chasing Art in New York

I sold nearly everything I owned, including my car, and decided to take some time before diving into the next chapter, a few weeks to explore, visit family and friends, and make my way toward New York on my own terms. No job lined up. Just a train ticket and a dream of eventually landing in SOHO to sell art to people from all over the world.

I booked a ticket from Virginia to Miami. From Miami I went to New Orleans. From New Orleans I stopped in Tennessee to visit family. From there, my next stop was Chicago. After Chicago, I made a brief stop in Philadelphia to see my mom and sister before finally heading to New York to start my art career.

I remember how it felt walking around Philadelphia on that visit. Comfortable. Familiar. Almost like it was waiting for me. I wasn’t ready to hear that yet, so I got back on the train and kept going.

New York gave me exactly what I asked for. I worked a small gallery on the Upper West Side, then landed my dream job at Caldwell Snyder Gallery in SOHO, helping collectors from around the world build their collections. I sold a piece to actress Dianne Wiest without having any idea who she was until my coworkers came running over afterward. I spent an afternoon listening to Jane Seymour talk about a jewelry idea she was working on, something about open hearts, long before I ever saw it in stores. That job taught me the real art of the sale: listen first, then help someone find exactly what they didn’t know they were looking for.

I didn’t know it yet, but that job was preparing me for real estate.

The Call That Changed Everything

On October 28, 2001, I got a call from the coroner. My sister, Siani Lee, a well-known TV news anchor here in Philadelphia, had died in a car crash.

I called my mom right after and told her to wait for the police. I rushed home to Philadelphia to be with her and to handle my sister’s funeral. That week, I decided to stay. I moved my things into my mom’s house so I could be with her every day for the next nine months.

My mom was never quite the same. She was a proud mom, and losing a daughter so many people in the city admired was a grief that never fully lifted. I spent those months taking her to events that honored Siani’s legacy, sitting with her at doctor’s appointments, and just making sure she was okay.

That is the real reason I’m in Philadelphia. Not a five-year plan. Not a job offer. My family needed me, and Philadelphia is where they were.

Building a Career, and a Life, Out of Necessity

I needed steady, flexible work so I could stay close to my mom, so in 2002 I took a job as a leasing consultant. In 2003 I got my real estate license. I told myself it would just give me a flexible schedule. What I found was a career that actually fit who I am.

Real estate let me use both sides of myself, the analytical side that does the research and reads the market, and the creative side that walks into a home and sees what it could become. In 2006, I even filmed an episode of House Hunters and another show, National Open House, on HGTV.

That same year, my mom had a massive stroke that left her disabled. I packed up again, rented out my condo, and moved back in with her once she was released from rehab. I couldn’t put her in a nursing home. My brother and I, with the help of a full-time nurse, cared for her for three years, until she passed away in 2009.

Choosing Philadelphia, On Purpose This Time

After my mom passed, the old restlessness came back. I thought about moving to a new city, maybe even back to New York. But I had already decided, long before that moment, that Philadelphia was home. Not because I was assigned here, and not because I was needed here anymore, but because I wanted to be here.

So I stayed, and I built something. I’ve renovated and sold homes, built a real estate team, and spent seven years co-managing a Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices office in Rittenhouse Square before joining Compass. I’ve helped hundreds of people buy, sell, and invest in Philadelphia real estate over the past 24 years, and many of them have become genuine friends. The relationships are still the part of this work I cherish most.

Why I Do It the Way I Do It

Before real estate, I worked as an art consultant in New York City, including a role at Caldwell Snyder Gallery in SOHO, where I helped collectors from around the world build their collections. That background still shows up in how I work today. I don’t just help clients see a home as it is, I help them see what it could become.

I still collect art, and that eye for design shows up in how I work. I can walk into a home and immediately see what it could be. Just recently, I helped a client rework her bathroom renovation plan on my iPad the night after she closed, then told her exactly what to hand her contractor.

I also believe good advice has to be backed by real data, not gut feeling. I research every market I work in so my clients can make confident, informed decisions about whether to buy or sell.

But underneath the design sense and the research, it comes down to something simpler. I know what it means to not have a home, and I know what it means to finally find one. For me, the most important thing has always been listening to what people actually want, and helping them figure out exactly how to get it.