A life in scrolls — from a small town in Poland to a kindergarten classroom in Chicago, with stops at a basketball court, a college pennant, an Under Armour office, and a leap. Press start.
I was born in Poland and lived there until I was five. Then my parents brought us to the Chicagoland area — and we've been here ever since.
I don't remember much of those first five years. I've been back a few times since, and I always come away with the same thought: life can change a lot, even when you're a little kid. Especially when you're a little kid.
I loved sports. I loved science. I loved being active. But the thing that stuck the longest was basketball.
It's because the game asks for both — mental toughness *and* physical toughness, with elegance on top. It's a beautiful sport that tests you in every way possible. Just like life does. So in a real way, it helped shape who I've become.
Basketball taught discipline. The court doesn't lie — you put the work in or the game tells you. That part stayed with me.
But the bigger teachers were at home. I watched my parents work the tough jobs, the unglamorous ones. I got to see, with my own eyes, how far someone can come — landing in a country they didn't grow up in, building a life from scratch, buying a home, and putting my brother and me through college.
That kind of distance — Poland to that — doesn't happen by accident. It's the most powerful thing I've ever watched.
Valparaiso University. That's where I went, and where the work started piling up — for real, not in theory.
My first real job was as a gardener in the summer. After that, I picked up everything I could get my hands on: the Park District. A PR firm. Each job taught me a different muscle.
After college, the path wasn't a straight line — it was a sequence of doors. Some I walked through. Some opened only because I'd worked the one before.
The last job I held got bought. It was the kind of moment that hands you the question quietly: *what now?*
The answer didn't take long. Because by then I had a thesis — built up across every one of those five jobs — and it wouldn't sit still anymore.
248 is building a creator operating system — one that, through conversation and connection, manufactures opportunities for the growth of the people who support and participate within it.
It's the grown-up version of the portfolio I handed to a roomful of six-year-olds today. Theirs is paper and crayon. Ours is a network — where every story finds its people, every pursuit finds its room, and every conversation has a chance to become the next opportunity.
Because they're the ones who get to write the next chapters. Each of them got their first portfolio today — a small book with three drawings: who they are, what they love, and what they want to be. The same three answers that, scrolled together, become a life.
The story isn't done. Yours isn't either.