Welcome to my site.

I was born Raymond Jelley, although family and friends have called me R. J. since birth. With my father answering to Raymond and my great-uncle to Ray, a little distinction was useful.

There's a quotation often attributed to Mark Twain, although its authorship remains unverified:

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."

The second has taken me considerably longer to understand.

My mother had six sisters and a brother. On my father's side were three uncles and an aunt. Add my grandparents and more than thirty grandchildren between the two families, and a brief introduction becomes rather ambitious. My paternal grandmother had lost her sight at seventeen.

One of my cousins was born Deaf. She was intelligent and tenacious, but people who didn't know how to communicate with her could miss both. My grandmother faced a different difficulty in a world designed for people who can see.

They were my cousin and my grandmother. I knew them as family before I began to consider how much the rest of the world failed to understand about them.

Two weeks after my fifth birthday, while my family was vacationing in a seaside community, I was struck by a speeding car traveling the wrong way on a one-way street.

By high school, there were other things to learn. I attended a private school with students from large cities and small towns. My grades were average, money was tight at home, and athletics helped me earn my place.

Then there was Mr. G.

He was my homeroom teacher and taught English literature with the flair of a Shakespearean actor. Reading didn't come easily to me. Yet here were Beowulf, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Tolkien's The Hobbit, Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, and Steinbeck. His teaching style made me want to know more.

During freshman orientation, he wrote each student's name and hometown on the chalkboard. Mine appeared as:

Raymond Jelley / Windham

My name and the town I came from. There was no pen name involved at the time.

Over those four years, he helped me improve my reading and overcome my fear of public speaking. I became more confident and more interested in learning. Much later, I would draw on both in my writing and my work developing ethical AI platforms.

During the pandemic, when I began writing seriously, I considered a pen name. I remembered what Mr. G. had written on that chalkboard. R. J. was already mine. Windham had been beside it all those years earlier.

He taught English literature at my high school for fifty-one years, until his passing. To everyone who had the privilege of attending his classes, he was our own Mr. Chips.

R. J. Windham is my tribute to him.

Read Stanley Gorski's obituary on Legacy.com →

At twenty-six, while traveling by train in another country, I stepped out of a customs line to return to my partner.

Two steps.

A pipe bomb detonated in lockers near the place where I had just been standing. People were killed. Dozens were injured. I survived.

You might imagine that surviving something like that would make the decisions afterward easier. That I would recognize what mattered and act accordingly.

I'd like to tell you that was how it worked.

There were achievements, business disappointments, poor decisions, and opportunities I didn't make enough of. I repeated some mistakes. Others were new. Some things were beyond my control, and some were my responsibility.

Looking back, I can see choices I would make differently. At the time, I was still making them.

It was a Friday evening, around 7:30, when my phone lit up with the hospital's name.

I assumed someone was following up on my annual physical or calling to schedule an appointment. One cat was asleep on my lap. The other was lying at my feet. My wife was at work.

Then the conversation turned to cancer. I had expected a routine call.

My wife lives with multiple sclerosis. We had been married for twenty-five years. I was supposed to be the healthy one.

In 2015, elevated PSA levels had prompted a consultation with a urologist. The decision then was to monitor the situation without a biopsy. I heard the words "watchful waiting," but there was no follow-up. In late 2017, my health began to decline. I felt fatigued and unwell. In 2018, I was diagnosed with stage III prostate cancer.

I had heard the word "cancer," but I had no idea what would happen next.

I survived the cancer, surgery, and the complications that followed. As I recovered, I began reconsidering what I wanted to spend my time building.

I thought again about my grandmother and my cousin. My experience was different from theirs, but I began to look more closely at something I had seen before: information could be available and still leave someone without the understanding they needed.

In 2023, I founded The TSL Project.

That work now includes Awareness365 and PROJECT UNDERSTOOD. We examine how people understand information across languages, cultures, and different ways of communicating.

Awareness365 builds the infrastructure. PROJECT UNDERSTOOD proves it.

Through research, partnerships, and practical demonstrations, we return to a question I know personally: what happens when someone receives information that matters, yet leaves without understanding what it means for them?

There is more to find out. That is the work.