Associate, Barton & Gingold

Age: 30

Home: Portland

FUN FACTS

Favorite band:

Al Green, Tigercity, Hall & Oates

Favorite place in Maine:

Acadia National Park, SPACE Gallery, State House Hall of Flags

If you had 24 hours to live, what would you do?

Play house with my daughters

I want everyone to know...

Hall & Oates isnít really my third favorite band.

Where are you from?

I grew up in Lamoine and went to high school in Bar Harbor. I went out of state for college after that.

Where did you go?

I went to Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. After that I went to Boston for a while.

What did you do in Boston?

Iíd been studying music primarily in college, so I sang in a band for a while and did odd retail management work. And I met my wife in Boston, who did a lot of her growing up in Maine as well.

What brought you back to Maine?

We migrated back to Portland from Boston. Both of our families are located almost entirely in Maine, so that brought us a little closer to our families as we were starting to think about starting a family of our own. We liked Portland because it was a vibrant city, which we were used to having just come out of Boston.

Portland has a different pace. We liked the balance of having a lot going on culturally and aesthetically, but also getting to be closer to our roots and natural beauty practically right outside your door.

What did you do in Portland when you returned to Maine?

We opened a design shop in an up-and-coming neighborhood. It gave my wife a place to have an affordable studio space, but also we were seeing a need at that time for cool, affordable house wares for people like us. Selling that stuff got us connected to the community and it also, being a young, creative business owner, got me connected to the early Creative Economy movement in Maine. REALIZE!Maine was simultaneously in its infancy and I got involved in both efforts.

What is the Creative Economy?

The Creative Economy describes where our national and global economies have moved. I think it speaks to how we as a statewide community need to focus on innovation in all of our industries. I think that Maine really has the opportunity to excel and be a real competitor globally because of our extraordinary quality of place.

Why is the Creative Economy an important part of the effort to attract and retain more young people?

One of the things we know is that workers of all kinds, but especially younger workers who are the innovation workforce, chose to move to great places. I think if we work to maintain the natural beauty and the amazing downtowns that we have in the state, and make sure that people know that we have that; if we marry that with a concerted effort to encourage industrial innovation and creativity, I think weíll have the place and the jobs that young people want.