My career path has been varied and has taken me to many unexpected places. Right after graduating from Georgetown University I moved to San Francisco and worked for PwC, then moved to New York City and worked in the Financial Planning & Analysis department at HBO. This experience working for big companies in big cities taught me a lot about rigor and discipline and opened my eyes to how big the world is.

After that I moved back to Buffalo-Niagara and spent a decade doing much different work. First came my father's business — an analog photography company that needed to go digital or it would cease to exist. I helped make that transformation happen. It was intense, personal work, the kind that tests you in ways a corporate job never could. From there I worked as a strategic consultant and fractional CFO across a range of companies — different industries, different challenges, different stages of growth. That work gave me a taste for consulting and a breadth of perspective I couldn't have gotten any other way.

For the past ten-plus years I've served as President of TM Montante Development, one of the region's most active real estate development companies. The work has demanded everything — financing, strategy, public partnerships, community trust, internal alignment — often all at once, with real neighborhoods and real people depending on the outcome. I was honored to be named to the Power 250 by Buffalo Business First in 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026 for this work — a list that ranks the most influential business leaders across Western New York.

My work at TM Montante Development has meant a great deal to me personally. The Lancaster Square project, which converted the former Millard Fillmore Gates Circle hospital into a mixed-use development, reconnected Buffalo neighborhoods that had been divided by a vacant hospital site, while also bringing lots of residential density, both market rate and affordable. 616 Niagara in Niagara Falls converted an eyesore into a beautiful building with a future, in a city that needed proof that things could still get done. These weren't just development projects. They were also acts of belief in places that are important to me and that deserve better.

I've learned that the hardest part of any complex endeavor isn't the financing or the strategy, it's the human part. Getting people aligned. Building trust across very different stakeholders. Knowing when to push and when to listen. That's where I've grown the most, and it's what I find most interesting.

I also serve on the boards of Invest Buffalo Niagara and the Niagara Arts and Cultural Center — work that reflects the same instinct: building things that matter, here.