For as long as I can remember, I’ve been captivated by the idea of building a life around creativity. Early on, creativity showed up as play: on the field and the stage, in sketchbooks and essays. In high school, I was enraptured by the liberal arts and the principles that connected them, exploring music, rhetoric, literature, and philosophy. That instinct carried me to Northwestern University, where I studied Communication, Creative Technology, and Entrepreneurship, sharpening my belief that creativity isn’t just a talent, it’s a system of thinking that can be leveraged for attention, innovation, and growth.

At Northwestern, I launched Jay Towns Photography and built a client base from scratch by capturing human stories. I learned to balance craft and commerce—developing systems, handling contracts, and driving growth. These principles guided my subsequent ventures in the entertainment and media space, where I signed with Stewart Talent, published creative work on YouTube and Spotify, and landed features on NBC, NPR, and Prime Video.
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From there, I entered the world of advertising, working with global agencies like DDB and FCB to craft campaigns for brands like McDonald's, Hefty, Skittles, and AbbVie. I learned how to channel narrative and emotion into commercial results, helping FCB bring in $4MM of new business and launching work that resonated across channels. This helped me understand storytelling at scale, driving business with creativity.

Most recently, my curiosity has pulled me toward the emerging tech space. As a freelance Consultant and Prompt Engineer at Outlier AI, I worked at the frontier of language and logic, enhancing training data to improve how AI models understand marketing. Along with my pure enjoyment of these new innovations, working with generative AI reinforced the importance of systems thinking, frameworks for problem-solving, and the importance of clear communication to achieve a desired outcome.

Now, as the Founder and Principal Consultant of Renaissance, I help startups clarify who they are, what they stand for, and how to grow, using tech-enabled creativity to build brand identities, marketing strategies, and systems that turn ambitious ideas into actionable ventures.

Creativity isn’t a destination, it’s a discipline; it resists definition, but its impact is undeniable. I’m drawn to its edges—exploring how it can be applied across ventures, industries, and ideas—and my work is an ongoing exploration of how to use it on things that matter.