Joe was born in West Virginia, where his folk have been truck drivers and farmers for as long as West Virginia has been a state. Lacking the eyesight, stamina and green thumb of his heartier forebears, he studied philosophy at Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia.
At various points, he's gotten paid for delivering pizzas, helping a think tank create one of the earliest scrollytelling reports, working the overnight shift at a convenience store, teaching courses with names like Metaphysics and Science Fiction, cooking breakfast at a Holiday Inn, pounding rock samples from drilling cores into dust with a sledgehammer, verifying that Barack Obama had a real birth certificate, supervising a cabin full of nine-year-olds with ADHD, attempting to teach just war theory to a room full of West Point cadets on 12 September 2001, and helping the US EPA talk about climate change during the Trump administration. Not necessarily in that order.
These days, he's a partner at Soapbox, the world's first full-service design agency dedicated exclusively to working with people who use research and evidence to make the world a more peaceful, prosperous, just, equitable and sustainable place. He is the director of Soapbox's Washington, DC studio and leads the agency's strategy practice.
When not helping clients build better websites or writing nonlinear essays, he enjoys neat bourbon, hiking through the mountains, machined pens, a good science fiction yarn, board games, vegan cooking and talking about himself in the third person.
Joe lives in Washington, DC with his amazingly talented and wonderful wife Caroline and two of the softest cats you will ever meet.