Hi! I’m Stephen, a native Midwesterner who has lived and traveled throughout our wonderful region! From an early age, the heartland wasn’t just a place I called home. It was my classroom, my playground, and my greatest teacher.
Growing up, my family never stayed in one spot for long. Work and circumstance meant we packed up and replanted ourselves every few years, always somewhere new but always somewhere unmistakably Midwestern. By the time I finished high school, I had called multiple states home and had developed a keen sense for what made each corner of this region tick. Its people, its rhythms, its quiet pride.
After college, I spent years crisscrossing the region for work and curiosity in equal measure. Small towns, mid-sized cities, rural stretches of highway where the horizon seems to go on forever. I’ve sat at a lot of kitchen tables, attended a lot of local events, and had a lot of long conversations with folks who represent the true backbone of American life.
That accumulated experience, part upbringing, part wandering, part genuine love for the place, is what shapes everything I share. I’m not an outsider looking in. I’m one of you, just someone who has been fortunate enough to see a little more of what this remarkable part of the country has to offer.