Author, Journalist

After majoring in Soviet Government at Cornell University, I arrived in Russia in 1987 as a driver-mechanic for the US embassy in Moscow. A year later, I moved to Votkinsk in the foothills of the Ural Mountains, where I inspected missiles at a production plant as part of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

There I met a young woman assigned to keep an eye on me for the local KGB.

After my stint as a weapons inspector, I moved to Moscow and got married. It was the first of several marriages between treaty inspectors and missile factory escorts.

I worked as an executive for Hewlett-Packard Russia for twenty years. I then served as the business editor for the Moscow Times daily newspaper from 2010 to 2014 and authored several articles about Russian-American relations, the tragicomedy of life in Russia and cigars.