A port from a standing start.
A cluster from an idea.
An office from a mandate.
I build and navigate. Building is what starting and scaling take. Navigating is what every day after takes. Twenty years of both; now alongside organizations doing it.
International Marine Terminal, Portland · 7,900 to 33,688 TEUs · $18M to $112M a year in throughput value · twenty years on the North Atlantic
Founder, Soli DG (2007). Director, Office of Commercialization, University of Southern Maine. Harvard Kennedy School, Leading in AI.
The builds, and the years before.
Before the builds
A cadet year on container ships in the Pacific and the Atlantic, a Military Sealift Command tanker through the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, ten days keeping a Liberty ship in San Francisco. Then four years as a navigation officer with Norwegian Cruise Line: the Caribbean, the Mexican Riviera, Alaska, the Baltic, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal more than once. The last ship I joined at the yard in Germany and sailed to Hawaii: the first thing I helped build.
The International Marine Terminal
Years of groundwork, then Eimskip in 2013, built with Iceland's shipping line and the Maine Port Authority when Portland became its U.S. port. 7,900 to 33,688 TEUs; $18M to $112M in annual throughput value. Carriers and shippers recruited from zero.
moreNew England Ocean Cluster
Founded as the first sister cluster of the Iceland Ocean Cluster. The Hús on Commercial Street. A regional blue economy convened from a single room.
University of Southern Maine
Standing up the university's first Office of Commercialization: industry sprints, a cooperation agreement with UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and workforce development between Iceland, Norway and the United States.
Maine Port Authority · Eimskip · City of Portland · Panama Canal Authority · Halifax Port Authority · New Bedford Harbor Authority · Nestlé Waters North America (Poland Spring) · Bristol Seafood · Ready Seafood · Thompson's Point
Navigation.
Building and navigating are one process. Building is the work of starting something or scaling it, and the two ask different things of you. Navigating is the constant: the pivot, the restructure, the course held through weather, the log kept. The builds above are the proof. The work now is coming alongside an organization in the middle of either, a port, a campus, a new line of business, a partnership across an ocean, as the entrepreneur in the room: set the course, hold it through the hard part, leave something that earns.
Infrastructure and logistics
Ports, corridors and the commercial agreements behind them: public owners, carriers, shippers, and the terms that make the revenue hold.
Commercialization and institutions
Clusters, universities and public-private partnerships, from the first conversation to the operating model and the money behind it.
The North Atlantic
Maine, Iceland, Norway and Greenland: how cargo, people and partnerships actually move between them, learned over thirteen years of doing it.
A first conversation costs nothing; the second one is work.
Three questions, then thirty minutes.
A first conversation costs nothing; the second one is work. Answer these in a sentence or two and I will reply within two working days.