Born and raised in Metro-Detroit, Colin is a lifelong learner and storyteller. His personal motto is To Learn, To Lead, To Serve (he may have stolen that motto from some college, but the message stuck). He has had success as a contemporary watercolorist, author, and fintech executive and adviser (legal/compliance stuff).
His first love is fine arts (technically his first love is his family). He draws every day just for the love of the art form. He received comprehensive training in watercolor painting and has developed a unique and powerful style. In describing his art, The Detroit News said Colin employs “a bold, colorful style reminiscent of the German Expressionists.” He shows extensively throughout New York and Michigan (currently showing at The Carr Center from 9/15/2017 to 10/15/2017), and in 2010 Rackstraw Downes, a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, selected one of Colin’s pieces for the highly competitive 18th Annual National Juried Exhibition at the Bowery Gallery in New York City. Colin has also illustrated for the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Arts-Detroit. Colin is also on the Board of Directors for one of the oldest art galleries in Detroit, the Detroit Artists Market.
His second love is using his legal expertise to counsel RocketLoans and other fintech ventures. RocketLoans is a Detroit-based fintech company that makes lending radically simple. RocketLoans is a sister company to Quicken Loans. He also works with the Irvine, California based fintech company Fluid — a social credit card. And Colin helped form and is on the Board of Governors of the fintech think tank the Online Lenders Policy Institute, which among other things host the highly influential OLPI Policy Summit in DC.
His third love …okay, that got old quick — there is not an order to his loves (except family, family is first). He loves a lot of things, and because we only live once pushes himself to fully experience a lot of different pursuits. He loves to write and has been published in both legal and fine arts based publications. For fine arts, check out the highly influential Brooklyn based art blog Hyperallergic, the arts section of The Huffington Post, the Art:21 Magazine , which is part of the Peabody Award winning PBS Art:21 – Art in the 21st Century project, and the new Detroit-based arts journal infinite mile . For legal …email him if you actually want to read that “stuff.”
