Gil Ahrens is the author of Shattered, Shaken and Stirred: Reconnecting with What Matters Most After Loss and Advsersity. It is his account of the aftermath of a head-on collision with a drunk driver that left his wife paralyzed, but their three week-old daughter miraculously unscathed. This is his first book.

Gil was born to parents whose families played significant roles during dramatic turning points in the histories of the United States and Germany. From his father's side, he is a direct descendant of Israel Bissell, who has been credited with performing the real midnight ride in 1775 (while Paul Revere slept in a tavern) that warned American colonists of the British invasion. From his mother's side, his great uncles, Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg and Friedrich Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, were among the high-ranking German officers who were executed for their central roles in the July 20, 1944 assassination plot against Adolf Hitler.

Early in his business career, he co-founded a consumer electronics start-up, and worked in Japan in strategic planning for a large global manufacturing company. Subsequently, Gil was an investment banker for several years, most recently as a Managing Director at J.P.Morgan.

He has been an elder at Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco and is on the board of directors at Abilities United, a non-profit in Palo Alto, California that helps champion those with developmental or physical challenges.

Gil Ahrens was born in Suffield, Connecticut and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is married to Kim, an amazing woman with whom he shares the joy of raising a charming, brilliant and utterly wonderful young daughter. Together, they all succumb to the whims of Sparky, their domineering Jack Russell Terrier and Bella, a demur Scottish Terrier determined to dominate every inanimate object. He holds degrees from New York University and Boston University and briefly studied music at the New England Conservatory of Music.

He is passionate about ice hockey, Formula 1 racing, University of Texas football, and cigars (a vice he acknowledges freely). He often wishes that he could be more Italian in mind, matter, or the spoken hand.