Started on The Domain

My tree career started at Sewanee: The University of the South where I studied Natural Resources and dove deep into the biodiverse forests of The Domain. From there I built my career foundation before getting into arborist consulting: Forest Service inventories in Eastern Maryland, campus tree care in Charleston, SC, street tree inventories, city contract management & complex tree risk assessments in NYC.

I moved on to the private sector and built a consulting practice in Chicago, honed my tree preservation planning expertise in DC Metro, worked on consulting assignments coast to coast and border to border and eventually led one of the largest arboricultural consulting divisions in the world at SavATree.

After all that, I decided to start my own consulting practice in Nashville - Shakerag Consulting. The name Shakerag comes from Shakerag Hollow in Sewanee, an old growth forest famous for its spring wildflowers, limestone bluffs, and big trees. Legend has it that you could walk to the edge of the bluff, shake a rag to signal to the moonshiner below, leave your payment, and upon returning a little while later, the money would be gone and a fresh jar of moonshine would be left in its place.