Athlete. Combat Veteran. Founder. Builder.

I was born in Passaic, New Jersey, but growing up, home was never really one particular place.

Passaic. Paterson. Belleville. Clifton. Lyndhurst. And more.

I lived at more than eight different addresses growing up. I was raised by my mother in a single parent household, and we moved around a lot. I never really had the experience of planting roots in one neighborhood, growing up in one house, or calling one place home.

At the time, I didn't think much about what that was teaching me.

I was just a kid adjusting.

New home. New neighborhood. New people. Start again.

Looking back, I think it shaped me more than I realized.

I learned how to walk into unfamiliar places and find my footing. How to connect with different people. How to adapt when circumstances changed.

We didn't come from money. There wasn't a family business waiting for me or a network of people who could open doors.

But I had my mother.

I watched her sacrifice and figure things out over and over again. No matter where we were living or what we were going through, she found a way to keep us moving forward.

I think that's where I learned one of the most important lessons of my life.

And through all that moving, there was one thing that always felt familiar.

Soccer.

The first place I belonged

I loved soccer.

It was the first thing I can remember being completely consumed by.

No matter where we were living, the game stayed the same. The field became somewhere I understood and, in many ways, the first place I really felt like I belonged.

I spent much of my childhood competing for multiple elite youth programs at some of the highest levels of soccer in the country. One of those teams was the Ironbound Predators out of Newark, a team that won three national championships.

Soccer opened my world.

It took me places. It introduced me to people. It taught me competition, discipline, teamwork, confidence, and how to respond when things didn't go my way.

More than anything, it gave me something to chase.

Eventually, I received scholarship money to play at Division I programs.

It felt like everything I had worked for was beginning to pay off.

But there was another reality.

The scholarship money wasn't enough.

For my family, whatever remained wasn't a small number. It was money we genuinely struggled to afford.

I ultimately chose Rutgers University Newark and continued playing.

As a freshman forward, I played in 18 matches, tied for the team lead with eight goals, finished second on the team with 17 points, and recorded the team's only two hat tricks of the season.

Soccer was going well.

Life was more complicated.

A decision bigger than soccer

Even Rutgers was difficult for us to afford.

I watched my mother use the little money she had to help pay for my education.

That stayed with me.

She had already spent my entire life sacrificing for me. Now I was watching her struggle financially so I could keep chasing my future.

I couldn't keep doing that.

I knew there was another path.

If I joined the military, I could serve, earn my education benefits, and take that financial burden off my mother.

So at 18 years old, while succeeding as a college soccer player, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life.

I walked away from college soccer and joined the United States Army.

It wasn't because soccer didn't work out.

It wasn't because I stopped loving the game.

I left because sometimes life asks you to make a decision that's bigger than what you want in that moment.

My mother had spent years sacrificing for me.

I felt like it was my turn.

The Army

I originally joined the Army with education in mind.

I had no idea how much it would ultimately shape the person I became.

I served as an Infantryman and eventually became a Sergeant and fireteam leader. I deployed to the Horn of Africa in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

I'm proud of my service and the things I accomplished during that chapter of my life.

But when I think about the Army, what stays with me most isn't what can be written on a résumé.

It's the people.
It's responsibility.
It's understanding that other people are depending on you.
It's discovering who you are when you're tired, uncomfortable, under pressure, and things aren't going according to plan.

The Army taught me discipline. Leadership. Accountability. Resilience.

But more than anything, it reinforced something I had already watched my mother do my entire childhood.

When there isn't an easy way, you find one.

Finishing what I started

Eventually, I came back to the education that had been part of the reason I joined the military in the first place.

I earned my bachelor's degree in Finance from William Paterson University of New Jersey, and years later returned to earn my MBA from William Paterson as well.

Those degrees mean more to me than what is printed on them.

There was once an 18 year old watching his mother stretch what little she had to help pay for college.

Years later, I finished what I started.

That means something to me.

But education also opened my eyes to another world.

Business.

I became fascinated by how things were built.

How does an idea become a company?
Why do some businesses grow while others disappear?
How do you convince someone to believe in something before anyone else does?
How do relationships become opportunities?
How do you walk into an industry you know nothing about and learn enough to make an impact?

I wanted to understand all of it.

The problem was, I didn't come from that world.

I didn't have a business network. I didn't have family connections. I didn't have anyone handing me a playbook.

So I relied on something I had been doing my entire life.

I found a way in.

Get in the room

I learned something about myself pretty young.

I didn't need someone to guarantee me an outcome.

I just needed an opportunity.

Give me the interview.
Take the meeting.
Give me a seat at the table.
Let me have the conversation.

I'll take responsibility from there.

As my career progressed, I started finding myself in rooms I never imagined I would be in.

I remember some of those moments.

You look around. You hear the titles. You listen to the conversations. You realize you didn't grow up around any of this.

For a moment, you wonder whether you belong.

Then you listen.

You contribute.

You connect with people.

And eventually I realized something that changed the way I saw myself.

I belonged there too.

Not because I knew everything.

I didn't.

I belonged because I was willing to learn.

One conversation became another.

One relationship led to another introduction.

One opportunity created the next.

Slowly, the person who started without a network began building one relationship at a time.

And I've never forgotten the people who gave me those opportunities.

That's probably why opening doors for other people means so much to me today.

Learning to build

My career became another education.

I worked in startups where almost everything still had to be figured out.

I worked inside major organizations and saw how some of the largest companies, brands, and agencies operate.

I entered industries I knew very little about and learned by asking questions, listening, making mistakes, and surrounding myself with people who knew more than I did.

Over the years, I worked across technology, media, healthcare, government, sales, partnerships, and business development.

Every environment was different.

And that's what I loved about it.

I became comfortable being uncomfortable.

I learned that relationships matter.
Reputation matters.
How you treat people matters.
Curiosity matters.

And no matter how much you accomplish, there is always another room where you won't be the smartest person in it.

I learned to appreciate those rooms the most.

Because that's where you grow.

Eventually, I realized I wasn't passionate about one particular industry.

I loved taking something that wasn't working and trying to make it work.

I loved looking at a problem everyone accepted and asking why it had to be that way.

I loved connecting people who could help each other.

I loved creating opportunities.

I loved taking something that existed only as an idea and helping turn it into something real.

Most importantly, I loved learning.

That curiosity eventually changed the direction of my life.

I stopped thinking only about what company I wanted to work for next.

I started thinking about what I wanted to build.

Betting on myself

Entrepreneurship has been one of the most exciting and humbling parts of my life.

There have been wins.

There have also been failures.

I've lost money.
I've been wrong.
I've trusted the wrong assumptions.
I've pursued ideas that didn't work.
I've questioned myself.

And I've started over.

More than once.

I'm grateful for those parts of the story too.

Failure humbled me.

It made me more curious.

It made me less afraid of being wrong.

And it taught me something I wish more people talked about.

You can lose something without losing yourself.

You learn.

You adjust.

You keep going.

Eventually, I decided to take everything I had learned building for other people and start betting on some ideas of my own.

That led me to build Whale Control independently from zero.

It led me to create Liberato Advisory Group, where I can use what I've learned to help other entrepreneurs and businesses build.

And eventually, it brought me back to something I never really stopped loving.

Soccer.

Coming full circle

Promesa Sports Group is personal to me.

When I look at a young athlete and their family, I don't just see the business of sports.

I remember being that athlete.

I remember how badly I wanted to play.
I remember the practices, games, travel, and sacrifices.
I remember scholarship conversations.
I remember my mother trying to figure out how we were going to afford school.

I remember having ambition but not always knowing what doors existed or who could open them.

And I remember how much one opportunity could mean.

Today, I understand things I couldn't possibly have understood then.

Business. Partnerships. Media. NIL. Brand building. Athlete development. Representation. Networks. Opportunity.

In a way, I'm finding my way back to the game that gave me so much.

Only now, I have a completely different set of tools.

And maybe I can use them to open a door for someone else.

That's bigger to me than business.

Because I know what being given an opportunity did for my life.

The real story

I wish I could say there was a master plan connecting all of this.

There wasn't.

There was a childhood spent moving from place to place with my mother and learning how to adapt.
There was soccer and finally finding somewhere I felt like I belonged.
There was an 18 year old who didn't want his mother struggling to pay for his education.
There was a soldier learning how to lead.
There was a veteran coming home and finishing what he started.
There was a young professional walking into unfamiliar rooms and learning that he belonged there.
There was someone learning business by doing it.

And eventually, there was a founder willing to bet on himself.

I'm proud of what I've accomplished.

But I'm even more proud of what it took to get here.

The sacrifices my mother made.
The uncomfortable rooms.
The failures.
The times I didn't know the answer but was willing to learn.
The people who believed in me before I had done enough to prove them right.
The relationships I've built along the way.

And after all the moving, changing, failing, learning, and starting over, I still feel like I'm just getting started.

Still building

I don't look at this as a success story written from the finish line.

I'm still in it.

There is a lot I want to accomplish.

A lot I want to learn.

And a lot I want to build.

I want to create companies that matter.
I want to help people who are trying to build something of their own.
I want to create opportunities for athletes and families who may not know which doors exist yet.
And I want to keep putting myself in rooms that challenge me to become better.

I know where I came from.

I know what it took to get here.

And I know there is still a lot left to build.

My mother taught me sacrifice.
Soccer gave me somewhere to belong.
The Army taught me discipline and responsibility.
Education showed me what else was possible.
Business taught me how to build.
Failure taught me humility.

And every person who opened a door for me taught me never to underestimate what one opportunity can mean to someone.

So through everything, I've tried to live by two things.

There is more to learn.
More people to help.
More opportunities to create.
And a lot more to build.

I'm just getting started.