Firm Videos

My dad’s from Niagara Falls. He was a big Buffalo Sabres fan. He would always tell me about going to games with his father. From an early age, I was exposed to hockey and immediately became really, really interested. So then, I started playing goalie at a really young age at really competitive levels, and hockey really shaped who I am today. As I rose up through the years, you see that the most successful teams are those that are working really well with one another, that go through adversity together, united in one goal and working together to achieve that.

I had an amazing childhood, to be perfectly honest. I grew up in Rochester, New York, with two amazing parents who took it upon themselves to say, ‘Hey, we didn’t come from a lot, but we’re going to make sure we work really hard and that our kids have the best possible life.’ From an early age, people used to kind of joke that they thought I should be a lawyer just because I was always questioning everything. I’ve always been the type of person who’s been extremely curious. If I don’t know the answer to something, I need to know—I need to look it up. I first became a lawyer in 2009, and I was working at a really large litigation firm in New York City, where I solely represented people who were diagnosed with mesothelioma or lung cancer as a result of being exposed to asbestos.

Getting to know these people, sitting in their living rooms, understanding their stories really fueled me to want to go above and beyond for them, and that’s something that I’ll never forget. I learned from my father and also from my mom to be good to people, to be honest, to be fair. And that’s a concept that we bring here to the firm. Everyone has their part to play, and we have to love one another. If we have issues, we need to talk through them, working with everybody to understand how we can get better, how we can make their lives easier, how we can create a much better client experience for the people who put their trust in us