Cognitive Analysis

Analyzing how people think when data, metrics, and models reach their limits.

Some decisions don’t get clearer with more information.

• You’ve reviewed the data.

• You’ve modeled the scenarios.

• You’ve pressure-tested the assumptions.

And still:

• Every option feels incomplete.

• Reasonable arguments point in different directions.

• The decision carries consequences that extend beyond the technical or financial.

At this point, the obstacle is rarely intelligence or effort.

It’s that the way the situation is being understood no longer allows an answer to form.

This is where my work begins.

Background and Perspective

My work is informed by formal training in rhetoric — the art of effective communication — along with years of experience working with high-functioning professionals in contexts where judgment, meaning, and interpretation matter.

I hold advanced academic training in philosophy and communication, and have studied and taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Temple University, and the University of Pittsburgh. Much of my career has been devoted to understanding how language, framing, and symbolic systems shape perception, understanding, and decision-making.

Alongside academic work, my background includes applied experience in live, unscripted contexts. I’ve served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, worked as a Communications Specialist for the American Red Cross of Alaska, and spent years in live performance, corporate training, and keynote speaking. These settings demand attentiveness, interpretation, and judgment under real-world pressure.

This combination allows me to work comfortably at the intersection of rigorous thinking and lived experience, helping clients navigate decisions that require more than technical analysis alone.

What a Cognitive Analyst Does

A Cognitive Analyst works with individuals and organizations to facilitate clear answers in situations where judgment matters more than calculation.

Rather than supplying solutions, I help clients:

• clarify what the decision is truly about

• surface assumptions that are quietly shaping conclusions

• reconcile competing values and priorities

• articulate answers that already exist in implicit form.

The answers that emerge are not imposed.

They are reached deliberately, coherently, and with ownership.

How Answers Take Shape

The work is structured, conversational, and interpretive.

Instead of advising or prescribing, I guide a disciplined inquiry into how a decision is being framed — and where that framing may be preventing resolution.

This process is designed to:

• slow thinking at critical moments

• reframe the question when necessary

• test interpretations rather than defend positions

• allow conclusions to crystallize rather than be forced.

The outcome is not endless reflection.

The outcome is an answer that can be acted on.

The Tools, in Plain Terms

Human beings have never relied on data alone to reach sound judgments.

Dialogue, analogy, narrative framing, and symbolic devices have long been used to help people think clearly under uncertainty, especially when decisions involve meaning, identity, or long-term consequence.

I draw selectively from these traditions, alongside philosophy and psychology, using them as aids that externalize thinking and interrupt habitual patterns.

They don’t provide answers.

They create the conditions in which answers become reachable.

What This Work Is Designed to Produce

By the end of a session, clients typically leave with:

• a clearer understanding of what is actually at stake

• a decision reframed in terms they can stand behind

• language for an answer they already sensed but hadn’t articulated

• a firmer basis for action, without outsourcing judgment.

This is not about perfect certainty.

It is about clarity that holds under pressure.

Who This Tends to Fit

This approach resonates most with people who:

• are capable but feel stalled

• sense that a decision is being distorted by framing rather than facts

• want an answer they can own — not one borrowed from a framework.

Executives, founders, creatives, and senior professionals often arrive knowing a decision must be made — but not why the answer hasn’t yet settled.

That lack of settlement is the signal.

What to Expect

Sessions are focused, unscripted, and attentive.

The work helps clients:

• articulate what they already know but haven’t yet said

• see tradeoffs without illusion

• arrive at conclusions that feel both honest and usable.

Any structured or symbolic elements are used deliberately, as tools that support inquiry, not as conclusions in themselves.

From Insight to Action

In complex situations, clarity is what allows action to follow without second-guessing.

When the answer is reached cleanly — rather than forced or borrowed — it tends to endure.

That is the point of this work.

Engage

If you are facing a decision where an answer matters — and want to reach it with clarity rather than noise, this work may be a fit.

Book a session to facilitate the answer you need to reach, when the usual tools stop producing clarity.