About

Brian’s youth was spent playing and exploring within Brazil’s vibrant landscapes.  A vast country with significant social and economic disparities, yet whose communities found common ground through a passion for recreation.   Like breathing, it was a natural reflex, a shared experience infusing vitality into life’s daily challenges.  Here, play was serious business, a sacred act, possessing subjects without regard to age, gender or status. Its spirit manifesting fervently through carnival, world cups, samba and surf.  Sports, music and dance it’s beautiful byproducts. Like barefoot undersized children spilling down from favelas, ferociously challenging city buses for parity on streets to play their beloved game, the country’s resilience felt unbound, tenacious, and perpetually youthful.  This was the context of Brian’s formative years.  

A decade later, while studying counselling at the University of Edinburgh, Brian volunteered at a facility for men transitioning from living on the streets or incarceration.  Learning their stories, he witnessed a theme of childhood neglect and abuse from those whose job it was to care for them.   Brian went on to work at World Vision, a large international NGO. Following that, he helped resource social programs at The Salvation Army. He later headed up development at Lifewater International, a clean water agency operating programs in Africa and Asia.  Most recently Brian provided leadership at Kids Around the World, a boutique child development agency providing play, nutrition and training for partners in over 80 countries.  Brian is a national speaker on incorporating play as a strategy for holistic  development and has helped launch community-based play projects around the globe.  Brian lives in California with his wife, a psychology professor and clinical family therapist, along with their teenage daughter, who enjoys varsity team sports.