Who I Am

I grew up in a military household, the son of a rear admiral. Good moral character was the standard everyone around me was expected to hold themselves to, before anything else.

I found the same principle again, from the other side, during my own years in the Italian Navy.
Sixteen years in total, including the academy, working on board ships, always as the only doctor aboard, as medical advisor for the NATO fleet in my home town, and a 28-month deployment with the MFO, the Multinational Force and Observers, in the Sinai. Not a war zone, but not a friendly environment either.

In these settings you learn to trust the guy next to you, even up to with your life, and I learned that I'd choose that guy based on his moral values, because people with real moral values tend to also have real professional skills, holding themselves to a standard regardless of who's watching.
This understanding stayed with me even after I stopped wearing the uniform, and it remains, to this day, one of the greatest lessons I've learned professionally. I still choose who I work with largely on that basis.

After the Navy I trained as a GP and have been practicing since, in Italy first, as an MMG, Medico di Medicina Generale, the Italian equivalent of a family physician, and then in Hamilton, New Zealand, where I've been practicing for the past two years.

Through those environments I learned to accept that there are often difficult calls that need to be made, and I was often the one who had to make them.
You do your best with the information you have, then you live with the consequences.

Outside the military I feel it's slightly easier to avoid that: ask for a second opinion, avoid the risky situation, delegate it upward.
I've never liked doing that. I ask when I'm genuinely uncertain, and I try to be honest with myself about when that actually is, that's part of why I built Goose in the first place . But I don't hide from the call.
I still sit with the responsibility, and I've learned to live with that honestly rather than pretend it's lighter than it is.
It's the same reason I don't shy away from a difficult conversation with a patient just because it's uncomfortable.
If something needs saying, I'll find a kind way to say it, but I'll say it.

That standard is a large part of why I stepped back from pushing Goose out the door before it was ready . Below it wasn't something I was willing to accept.

In my personal life I've always done sport, often competitively, semi-professional basketball when I was younger, obstacle course racing at regional level into my mid-thirties.
It might be a cliché, but I've learned first hand that hard work beats talent, if talent doesn't work hard, and I've made it one of my mantras.
That's why I take pride in remaining fitter in my forties than many are in their twenties, because despite injuries, age, a full-time GP job, and a household with three young boys, I've kept away from excuses and kept training, daily, through the ups and downs real life causes, never giving up.

I've decided to work at the intersection of healthcare and AI because it needs people with clinical knowledge, technical fluency, and, most importantly, good moral values, people who want to build something good, not just something productive or lucrative.

Husband to an amazing wife, father to three fantastic boys I love with all my heart, and trying, every day, to raise them to the same standard I was brought up with: honesty, passionate and consistent hard work, substance before appearance.