He lived with an artists’ collective in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, participated in festivals across the UK and Colombia, and attended Burning Man seven times. These weren’t vacations—they were deliberate immersions into alternative social structures, creative economies, and collaborative living models.

Berlin’s Kreuzberg taught him about regenerative communities built on shared resources and mutual support. Festival culture across continents revealed how temporary cities could organize around principles of gifting, participation, and radical self-reliance. Burning Man, in particular, offered a laboratory for understanding decentralized governance, resource allocation, and the economics of scarcity in extreme environments.

These experiences broadened his frame of reference and informed later community work in Puerto Rico and beyond. They provided a counterpoint to traditional business structures and demonstrated that viable alternatives existed— models that could be adapted, refined, and applied to everything from nonprofit leadership to civic investment strategies.