“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Alice in Wonderland

Brian was born on the east coast and grew up in Los Angeles. He moved to San Francisco to finish college, receiving a BA in International Relations from SF State in 1982. In 1986 he went to work at Charles Schwab, amassing a fortune in its stock, retiring in 1999 and then proceeding to lose most of the fortune to the stock market that gave it to him in the first place. What the market giveth, the market taketh .

Along the way, he married, had a daughter, got divorced and tried out a couple of new careers. In 2009, at the urging of his new partner, Ellen, he obtained a teaching credential in social studies, subsequently earning one in English. In April, 2015, after a few weeks of a bout with pneumonia, while in the hospital for observation, Ellen passed away. This led to Brian deciding that he needed a major “change of scenery” and leaving America to teach overseas seemed to fit the bill. As the old saying goes: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

In the summer of 2015 he was offered a job by the Swiss-based company, English First, teaching English to adults in one of their learning centers in Beijing. In April 2016, after living in the United States for almost 59 years, he left. He did make sure to not let the door hit him on his way out.