Documentary Series

UP CLOSE TALKS

Travelers want more than snapshots of ports; they seek a renewed understanding of the world, a transformative experience that lasts long after the trip is over. Holland America Line wanted to completely alter their fleet-wide onboard enrichment with a one-of-a-kind offering that would provide guests deeper understanding of their destinations while enhancing the onboard journey.

Up Close Talks is a multimedia, live-presented documentary series featuring stories that define a place. Each talk combines expert interviews, personal storytelling, rich animations, and archival research to ignite the sense of wonder that we all seek from travel. Presented live by an onboard storyteller, the unique format engages guests when they're most excited to learn and challenges them to interact with their surroundings in more meaningful ways.

Since launch in 2019, Up Close Talks have become Holland America Line's core enrichment offering. I wrote and directed nearly 40 documentaries as of 2025, covering every region Holland America Line visits. My team did stories about bush pilots in Alaska, bicycle activists in the Netherlands, cliff divers in Mexico and much more. These have been seen by hundreds of thousands of travelers, winning multiple industry awards, including 2023 Magellan Gold Winner. Viewers have said the shows changed the way they engage with the communities they visit and the communities they return to at home.

Live Stage Show

ORIGIN STORY

Turning the story of a 150-year-old brand into a live experience

I traveled all around the world to capture the story of the 150-year history of Holland America Line and turned it into a live stage presentation on board their fleet.

I started where I so often start: research. I scoured the brand's archives, traveled to their hometown of Rotterdam, interviewed retired captains, current team members, city officials, port agents, and passengers. I read postcards sent during WWII from Holland America Line ships and scanned thousands of photos from Christmas celebrations in the 1980s to transatlantic passenger manifests from the 1890s. I needed to understand what others have seen in this brand for the past century and a half.

The result is the opening night show on every single one of their cruises.

The Result

IMPACT IS OFTEN MORE
IMPORTANT THAN
IMPRESSIONS

Great stories create value. They let us know that we are not alone. They show us that there is meaning to be made and new stories to tell. That is all I ever hope for.

How do you quantify the results of a multi-year relationship? Yes, there have been awards. There have been accolades and press clippings. There have been parties and celebrations. There have been highs and lows and I have seen the world and helped others see the world anew. But the best result was when I overheard someone standing at the bar that I designed on a ship that I launched tell someone:

Research & Strategy

THE KEEPER AND
THE CHASER

I started with trying to understand who we're talking to. And settled on one key insight: every household with kids has two roles, whether people realize it or not. The Keeper is the parent who holds all the information (the schedule, the snack preferences, the teacher's name, which kid has practice on which day). The Chaser is the parent who's always one step behind, asking "what time is the thing?"

I built this framework from user interview data and validated it against academic research on family dynamics. It became the foundation for everything. When someone reads our content and thinks "that's my house," it's because the archetype work is doing its job underneath.

Brand Voice

HOW WE SOUND

Next it was time to figure out how we talk to The Keeper and The Chaser. We settled on a few things: Trader Joe's self-aware humor (we know this is absurd), Duolingo's willingness to be the butt of the joke (we're not above it), and Patagonia's care-without-credit ethos (we do this because it matters, not because we want you to notice).

The governing principle is what I call the "Ted Lasso Principle": capability stays in the background, care leads. The product is powerful but nobody wants to feel like they need a powerful product to manage their family. They want to feel like someone understands what their mornings are actually like. So that's how we talk.

Growth

60-DAY PLAN

Finally it was time to grow and do it with real math behind it. Tiered paid advertising budgets with three scenarios and full funnel projections. CAC targets based on actual comparable companies at our stage, not unicorn benchmarks that don't apply to an unknown app with zero budget. Organic social strategy mapped to the archetype work. Influencer pipeline with outreach cadence. App store optimization. A complete website overhaul. And content strategy built on a principle I backed up with data: recognition before selling. Before we sell to people we need them to see themselves in our story.

Research

MISSION-DRIVEN PEOPLE
NEED MISSION-DRIVEN
MESSAGING

I started with the doctors. The key finding was simple: pediatricians are mission-driven. They got into this work because they care about kids and families. Any brand or campaign that led with technology, efficiency, or clinical language was going to miss them. The messaging had to connect to why they became doctors in the first place. That insight shaped everything that followed.

Branding

LOOKING NOTHING
LIKE MEDICINE

CanvasDx and its sub-brands were given a decidedly non-medical look and feel. This was intentional. The visual identity needed to feel human and accessible, not clinical. The goal was to demystify the technology and make it feel like a natural extension of the care pediatricians already provide. If it looked like every other diagnostic tool on the market, it would be treated like every other diagnostic tool on the market. So we made it look like something else entirely.

Result

CLARITY AND HOPE

The launch campaign connected with pediatricians because it spoke to their values instead of their workflows. The branding stood out in a sea of clinical white-and-blue because it refused to look like medicine. And families saw a tool that felt like it was designed by people who understood what they were going through, because it was.

I'm also a teaching artist. Through The Moth, I've helped other people find and shape their stories. I've worked with victims of 9/11 and recently incarcerated youth. That work taught me something I use every day: the best stories are already there. The job is to help someone see what they already have.

The story had to do all the work. Instead of trying to explain the technical benefits, I focused on the emotional benefit. We leaned into the van life ethos that resonated with the target audience and let the feeling of freedom carry the message.

The result: the launch video became Sightful's most successful marketing effort. Covered by Wired and The Verge. One day, one location, no sun, and the best thing they ever made. When the budget constrains, the story has to be better. That's always been true.

The travel work is its own education. "36 Hours" asks you to distill a city into a feeling. "Block by Block" goes deeper into specific neighborhoods. Both require the same skill: figuring out what a place is actually about, not what the tourism board says it's about. That's the same skill I use in brand work, in documentary work, in everything.

I include this not because Hollywood defines my career. It doesn't. I include it because writing and editing a film that played at Sundance requires the same thing as building a brand messaging architecture or designing a cocktail menu that tells a 150-year history: you have to find the structure of the story, cut everything that doesn't serve it, and trust the audience to meet you where you are.

I made this because I wanted to prove that the most interesting stories are in the places people have already decided aren't interesting. Sports talk radio is a punchline. But the people who call in are real, and what they're really talking about is never sports. It's loneliness, belonging, identity, hope. That's what the show is about.