I grew up in Mount Pleasant, Ohio — a small town in Jefferson County, about an hour west of Pittsburgh. My family has been in the Ohio Valley since 1798.
I spent the first part of my career in Ohio politics, working on campaigns from the statehouse to Congress, including the We Are Ohio campaign in 2011 that brought 2.1 million voters out in an off-year election to protect collective bargaining rights.
From there I spent eight years at ExxonMobil in public and government affairs, where I worked on everything from shale development communications in the Appalachian Basin to technology partnerships with Microsoft and Amazon to the company's global corporate citizenship reports. I served as liaison to major trade associations across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and worked directly with the company's senior leadership on how ExxonMobil communicated its positions on climate, energy, and community investment.
I left ExxonMobil in 2021. Since then I've been consulting on communications and public affairs, teaching guitar, writing songs, and raising a family. Now I'm writing about economic development, energy policy, and what the Ohio Valley could still become.
I'm a guitarist, songwriter, and the founder of Eikenberry Music Studio. Music has been a constant through all of it.