Joe grew up in Elk County, PA, outside of Pittsburgh. The county’s name doesn’t come without reason. From the way Joe talks about it, it’s a woodsy place, where the elk may not outnumber the people but the wilderness certainly informs the pace of things, the way people live and relate to one another. Joe comes from several generations of journeymen, skilled laborers who know how to build, mend, and weld. This kind of legacy comes with a both a wealth of wisdom to mine as well as a heavy burden of identity, of subscribing to specific ideas about what it means to be a man. Joe manages this inheritance gracefully. When he isn’t confronting notions of toxic masculinity, he heads the woodshop at Peg and Awl.