A former U.S. Naval Reserve officer, Peace Corps Volunteer, and an attorney, Stephen has served as director or advisor to the The Company Lab, River City Company, TheGigCity initiative, Innovate Here, the regional Chamber of Commerce, the local Trust for Public Land, CreateHere, Chattanooga 3D, the American Lung Association, the Theatre Centre, Chattanooga STAND, and Causeway, a nonprofit supporting civic entrepreneurism. In 2010 he represented the Chattanooga region as a Marshall Fellow in Europe, and in 2012 he will become a trustee of the Lyndhurst Foundation.

An NCAA Division I fencer in college, Stephen graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Highest Distinction, ranked 8th in a class of 4,000.  While studying abroad in 1989 and ‘90, instead of sitting in class, he produced an on-site photo & audio journal of the political revolutions breaking out across Eastern Europe, including Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East and West Berlin (vs. sitting in class). He spent Christmas 1989 hammering pieces off the Berlin Wall, pieces he keeps to this day.

After a short research project at the United Nations in New York, Stephen joined the U.S. Peace Corps in 1992. Teaching high school for two years in a small town in Hungary, earning an ACTFL Advanced rating in Hungarian, his school named him Teacher of the Year.

Stephen returned to the U.S. to earn a degree at Stanford Law School, and completing a graduate fellowship at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation, studying international terrorism. He worked briefly for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, DC, and again as an Intelligence Research Specialist for the FBI Olympic Squad in Atlanta 1996, where he ran a leg of the Olympic torch relay.

Starting his first company in 1998 in a Stanford professor’s garage, Stephen recklessly set out to change an industry by inventing the first patented Smart Furniture®, pioneering the web-based “Design on Demand®” model, and bringing custom design to a whole new market– everyone. Applying the Peace Corps mission to help others to help themselves, his goal was (and is) to put design directly in the hands of consumers. Today, Smart Furniture is an industry leader in innovation, personalized design, customer service, and marketplace ethics.

Building on a belief in the power of people to help themselves, in 2008 Stephen co-founded Chattanooga STAND, one of the largest community visioning efforts in history, and in 2010 launched Causeway, a 501c3 organization designed to support civic entrepreneurism through a uniquely efficient and transparent model. In 2011 Stephen became a General Partner of the Chattanooga Renaissance Fund to foster local entrepreneurial growth.

In 2009, joined by talented entrepreneurs from Smart Furniture and elsewhere, Stephen founded Delegator.com. Built on experience in business and entrepreneurial trenches, Delegator was born of necessity, to help growing businesses (like Smart Furniture) focus on their core mission, and delegate the rest. With a fast growing list of clients, from 2-person startups to 150MM companies, Delegator relies heavily on the integrity of its team, and focuses on getting things done right, on time, and on budget, every time. Stephen is CEO.

Stephen was born in Birmingham, Alabama, youngest of five boys, and is now, finally, married, to one of his heroes, Karen. His interests include international affairs, athletics, and asking too many questions. He has climbed the Grand Teton in Wyoming and Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, holds a black belt and is occasionally sighted sparring in tournaments, is (or was) an avid surfer, and appeared on the November 2004 cover of Inc. Magazine. He also used to speak several languages, but now they’re all mixed up in his head. Finally, Stephen can tell you what happens when you (1) roll a forklift perpendicular over a drainage ditch, (2) haul 30,000lbs of inventory across the country in a truck rated for 10,000lbs, and (3) drive away from a gas station with the pump still in the tank, twice.■