Dina

Born in Colorado and raised in Arizona, California, and Virginia. I went to college at Virginia Tech and then I moved to the Washington DC area, where I met Jen in 1995. After 20 years and a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2016, she proposed; we were married on our 21st anniversary later that year. Along the way, we started a family and now our lovely daughter, Jordan, is 15.

Around that same time, we realized the hustle & bustle of the DC area was no longer for us. We realized we weren’t living our values and morphed from excess to minimalism … from consumerism to repurposing … from disconnect to connected … and before long we began to feel out of place and disappointed with where and how we were living. Cohousing had been on our radar for years but on the back-burner. Now, we found it consuming our thoughts. As we have family in Virginia, we didn’t want to move too far. Never did I think we would live in NC, yet here we are and we couldn’t be happier about our decision to uproot our family and move to Durham.

Sometimes you just have to wait until all things in life align and one day it just clicked for us. We discovered online this “urban” cohousing community coming soon to Durham and since it is walkable to grocery stores and restaurants, we knew this was for us! At first, we were driving to Durham once a month to attend meetings, then in mid-June 2019, we sold our home and moved into the neighborhood where BCC will be located so that we could familiarize ourselves with all of the wonderful amenities and continue forging relationships with our future neighbors.

I am definitely an introvert though skilled at playing the extrovert when needed. With the exception of the first few years out of college, I have always been self-employed. For six years, I co-owned a specialized telecom company offering services for international corporations. After selling it, I switched gears and became a residential real estate agent, which I did for about 16 years. One of my secret passions is no-limit hold ‘em poker. As an introvert, I am energized by deep and meaningful conversations and bonus if there’s a bottle of red wine involved! I am so grateful that I found BCC and I cannot wait until we are moved into our building and living together.