Becoming Jake
I didn’t grow up chasing titles. I grew up chasing understanding — of people, of systems, of what makes a moment feel true. My path wasn’t a straight line. It was forged in kitchens and call centers, on rooftops in the dead of winter, in nightclubs filled with pulse and poetry, and in quiet rooms where someone just needed to feel heard.
My first business was in evaporative cooling. Not glamorous — but real. I built it from scratch, eventually employing 32 people and capturing 90% of a local market. We scaled with ingenuity, not investment. No MBA, no playbook. Just intuition, grit, and a relentless desire to make work meaningful — not just profitable.
And over time, that same energy showed up in new rooms:
In boardrooms pitching vision to investors.
At whiteboards with engineers architecting platforms.
On clinical settings, walking doctors through onboarding flows.
In strategy sessions, translating chaos into coherence.
But success isn’t a straight climb. Loss taught me that.
When I lost my brother — and watched my partner descend into madness — the empire I’d built crumbled. The titles didn’t matter. The metrics didn’t save me. I came face to face with a deeper question:
Who am I if I’m not what I do?
What remains when everything else falls away?
Rebuilding from the Rubble
That collapse became a crucible. I started over — not with ego, but with empathy. I founded Liberatus Entertainment, not just to create events, but to create safe spaces — for kids, for artists, for anyone hungry for connection in a world that often forgets how.
I’ve worked as a restaurant manager, a parking director, a tech founder, a nonprofit organizer, a sales leader. But roles don’t define me. What does?
- I lead with heart, even in spreadsheets.
- I believe the best systems are built around how humans actually behave, not how we wish they did.
- I’m obsessed with language, culture, the invisible threads that make or break a team.
- I value clarity, not certainty — and I ask the kind of questions that change things.
What Drives Me
I’m driven by the possibility of organizations where people don’t have to split themselves to succeed. Where culture isn’t an afterthought but a design principle. Where feedback is love, not judgment. And where work isn’t just about what we produce — but who we become in the process.
I don’t have all the answers. But I’ve lived enough questions to hold space for complexity — and to help others walk through theirs.
Outside the Bio
I’m a father. A writer. A lover of systems, stories, and soul. I read philosophy and build product roadmaps in the same breath. I think strategic planning is poetry. And I believe the most important kind of success is staying true — especially when it’s hard.