Mike was born in Brattleboro, Vermont to a loving family. Growing up, his parents instilled in him the importance of treating everyone with dignity and kindness no matter their background.

His mother, Carolyn, started St. Brigids Soup Kitchen which serves over 45,000 Vermonters every year to this day. His father, Joe, started the Brattleboro Boys & Girls Club, and helped fundraise to install lights at local football field.

After high school, Mike went to Union College where he played football and graduated with a B.S. in Political Science. He later attended the University of Miami Law School where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and served as editor of the University of Miami Law Review. He clerked in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and practiced law in New York City before coming home.

When Mike returned home, he worked briefly at the Burlington Law Firm, Downs Rachlin Martin in the business law group. He was soon appointed Deputy Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation.

As Deputy Commissioner, Mike uncovered the Jay Peak EB-5 Scandal, the biggest case of financial fraud in Vermont history. The projects raised over $350 million in EB-5 investor capital. Over $200 million was misused on unrelated projects and on the developer’s personal expenses.

Soon after the scandal broke, Mike was appointed Commissioner of the Department of Financial Regulation (DFR) under Governor Peter Shumlin and reappointed by Governor Phil Scott.

As Commissioner of DFR, Mike recouped over $13 million for Vermonters, including a record $1.8 million settlement with a South Carolina insurance company for selling unapproved and inadequate insurance policies to Vermont college students.

He also served on the State’s Pension Task Force, and helped reduce the State’s unfunded liabilities by an estimated $2 billion

He was selected by Governor Scott to lead the State’s COVID-19 modeling and he appeared regularly at COVID press briefings. DFR also required health insurers to cover the cost of testing and treatment for COVID-19 and directed premium relief of over $25 million back to Vermonters.

In 2022, Mike left DFR to run for State Treasurer. In his first campaign, he traveled to all 252 towns in Vermont and won with 65% of the vote.

Mike focused his campaign on building more housing and delivering relief for working and middle class families.

In his first term, Mike successfully championed the passage of “Vermont Saves,” a free public retirement plan for Vermont businesses and their employees.

After the 2023 floods, Mike launched the Municipal Climate Recovery Fund (MCRF) with the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank to speed up recovery for towns awaiting assistance from the Federal Government.

Mike was re-elected as Vermont’s State Treasurer in 2024. He has focused his second term on addressing the critical need for more housing, and the crushing cost of healthcare in Vermont.

He has directed over $130 million in low-interest loans to build workforce housing from the state’s daily average cash balance through the Invest in Vermont program, creating over 1,700 new homes.

Mike proposed and passed a plan to buy and cancel $100 million of Vermonters’ medical debt with a one-time $1 million investment, and brought Vermont into ArrayRX, a multi-state prescription drug discount program that will save Vermonters thousands on prescription drugs at no additional cost.

This past year, Mike has taken a central role in leading Vermont through the chaos of the second Trump administration.

In January of 2025, Mike convened the Task Force on the Federal Transition to examine the challenges this Presidential administration could pose to Vermont’s economy. In addition to the massive risks and difficulties posed by Trump’s tariffs, one challenge was abundantly clear: a lack of resources to protect Vermont’s immigrant communities.

In response, Mike helped start the Vermont Immigration Legal Defense Fund which raised $1 million to directly support the lawyers protecting our immigrant neighbors in court.