Jeff has 20+ years of experience leading cultural heritage organizations, with a keen focus on strategic technology planning and implementation. In 2001, after quitting his corporate engineering job to attend a month-long silent meditation retreat, he met Gene Smith in Cambridge, MA. He worked closely with Gene during the formation of Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center building technical and organizational capacity, and establishing TBRC’s first digital library in 2006.

In 2009, Jeff became Executive Director at Gene’s request. During his tenure he established foundational programs that significantly advanced the organization’s mission. He established the Harvard University Repository for the Long-Term Preservation of Tibetan Texts, and the massive digital preservation program for Tibetan culture in China funded by the United States Agency for International Development. In 2015, he led the formal expansion of TBRC, funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, into all Buddhist languages. He founded the Buddhist Universal Digital Archives (BUDA) as a linked-data fueled hub of Buddhist texts, funded by the Robert H.N Ho Family Foundation, the Fragile Palm Leaves digitization project in Bangkok, Thailand, and the preservation and access of the National Library of Mongolia.

In 2018, Jeff stepped down in a planned transition and led the search committee to hire his successor Jann Ronis. In the last few years, Jeff has worked to advance technology in a variety of cultural initiatives, including Asian Legacy Library, the Hip-Hop Education Center, Tolani Lake Enterprises (Navajo Nation), and the Owl Bonnet Cultural Preservation Organization (Lakota Nation).