Pete has spent two decades researching the application of humor to all walks of life. He teaches classes and workshops on humor application to everything from improving education, innovation and communication and how to use it to improve your everyday life. Pete uses the wedding toast he did at his daughter’s wedding in his classes to illustrate the power of humor to inspire and connect. He uses humorous improvisation to catalyze technical ideation, and teach social skills to the many of his engineering students on the Autism Spectrum. He has been in ten weddings, and served has best man in five of them. Pete was married to his late wife Jennifer for 32 years, including the last seven when he was her primary caregiver and watched her fade away under the scourge of Fronto Temporal Dementia. This means Pete has a robust perspective on that “In sickness and health” part of a typical wedding ceremony. Despite that life challenge, he believes in love and marriage and decided to take his unique brand of applied humor and make peoples’ wedding days special. He is currently writing a comedy set for dementia caregivers that embodies his philosophy that “If you’re not laughing, your crying”.

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Pete is ordained by American Marriage Ministries, but his doctoral robe was not the result of a Doctorate in Divinity, but rather a Doctorate in Chemical Engineering from M.I.T. While this may not seem relevant, there are lots of parallels between metaphysics and chemical thermodynamics. His ceremonial approach is primarily secular, but because he spent years in Catholic School, he can relate the meaning of a preferred sacred reading to your event from 1st Corinthians to the other crazy letters that Paul wrote. As an alter boy, the church tried to convince him to consider the seminary until the juxtaposition of puberty with that pesky vow of celibacy changed his mind. While on the faculty at Georgia Tech, Pete was the faculty advisor to the Campus Atheists, whose name was later changed to the Free Thinkers because that tested better in focus groups. He has participated in dozens of interfaith panels and events, and even did an interfaith discussion panel for Georgia Tech Students entitled “A Jew, a Christian and an Atheist Walk into a Bar” at an Atlanta microbrewery hosted by a Christian minister. Regardless of your view, Pete can make your ceremony reflect your hopes and values on that special day, and hopefully not alienate your Aunt Phyllis who is already appalled that you’re not getting married in the Baptist Church.