The most important things in Alex’s life are being a father and husband. The foundation of his success in those things is a community of family friends and neighbors which he has worked hard to build. He feels lucky to have this foundation of success while acknowledging the tenacity and hard work he has put in to get here.

 

Alex was raised in a home of abuse; physical, emotional, and substance. His father succumbed to alcoholism when Alex was 14 years old. After his fathers death, Alex fell into his own pattern of anger and substance abuse. If it weren’t for the grace of his (newly) single mother, Alex believes he would have been on the streets. His mom never gave up on him. She worked her ass off as a UFCW member at Macy’s to put both of her sons through college.

 

Alex received his degree in education and worked in the homes of children with developmental disabilities. The job as a respite care provider began a lifelong commitment to helping those in need and resulted in relationships he still cherishes today.

 

At the same time, Alex began growing cannabis as a hobby. Due to a hiring freeze at Seattle Public Schools and a global recession a year after he graduated with his degree in education, his hobby turned into a career.

 

Alex started some of the first of their kind cannabis companies, including Solstice. He developed an incredibly diverse set of professional skills, from land development to advanced accounting to employee benefit package design. He even invited UFCW organizers to Solstice to meet with the workers there and hoped they would unionize.

 

At the time, there were so few laws about how people could work with cannabis that new laws needed to be written and legislators needed help. This led Alex to one of his life’s biggest passions, policy. His first experience writing and passing laws was at the state level with then Senator Kohl-Welles. It was the beginning of a ten-year whirlwind of cannabis reform where Alex drafted policy from the neighborhood level to the United Nations and most places in between. The majority of the time he was in Seattle City Hall.

 

After several years of working on cannabis laws while running Solstice, Alex realized he wanted to shift his priority to his family, his substitute teaching at Seattle Public Schools, and becoming a father.

 

On November 9th, 2019 (the best day of his life), Alex and his partner welcomed their baby into the world at Swedish First Hill. It was that day Alex realized he wanted to be on the city council.   

 

After making that decision, Alex began to put all of his professional effort into achieving his goal. Diving deeper into community engagement, he leveraged his past experiences of sitting on boards to become a member of every community group that would have him. From there, he worked to understand the challenges and opportunities facing our communities, while working to improve as many as possible.

 

Alex is prepared for doing the work of a city council member and is confident that he can serve District 3 in a way that improves everyones life.