What’s your historical San Francisco and New York connection?
I moved to NYC from Australia in 2006 for a brief stay… 8 years later it was home. I started to think about moving back to Australia after exhausting my 20s in NYC when SF came knocking. Now I’m 1 year in to SF life and loving the west coast life.

Describe your experience in SF and your experience in NYC.
The way I explain the difference is that SF is a “get up early” city, and NYC is a “stay out late” city. To do SF right you need to embrace the outoors: hit Big Sur, Tahoe, Napa, Yosemite. You want to be out in the day light, getting active or chilling in Dolores Park on a rare nice day. To do an NYC weekend properly you shouldn’t leave the party until after 3am, which means brunch after noon and starting it all again. NYC is more about soaking up the energy of such a vibrant collection of people jammed into such a small space.

What was the biggest challenge of moving between NYC and SF?
SF is definitely sleepy when compared to NYC. And commuting sucks when you used to take a Citibike to work. The first time you try to go out for dinner on a weeknight after 9pm, or grab a drink at 2am, you’ll be missing NYC in a big way.

How can NYC and SF best engage with each other?
NYC can help teach SF there’s a lot more to life than tech.

Favorite SF secret spot
I’ve been appreciating the Detour App for walking tours of SF that have opened up a lot of neighborhoods for me.

Favorite NYC secret spot
To be patriotic, few people have visited the great Aussie restaurant Flinders Lane in Alphabet City: and the best time to do it is their Monday BYOB night.

If you were not where you are now, what would you be doing?
After 5 years working for charity: water (a cause I still love), I’d be straight back into the social impact space.

Trip Entertainment: what song/album, TV show, podcast, or videos have you been consuming lately?
Australia Day was last week which means I’ve been working through the Triple J Hottest 100 playlist on Spotify.