He was born and reared in New York City. He spent his early teen years in Port Ludlow, Washington, and graduated from Bainbridge Island High School. He attended Bard College's political studies department where he studied with Alice Stroup, Gennady Shkliarevsky, Matthew Deady, Fred Hammond and Mona Simpson.
Ian then moved to New York City and got a job at ABC News and worked with Barbara Walters, Hugh Downs, Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, Thalia Assuras, Kevin Newman, Mark Mullen, Aaron Brown and Anderson Cooper. He trained himself to write news, and later became a news writer and producer in the top media market in the United States, the New York/Connecticut region.
He began studying Wu Mei kung fu with Sifu Ken Lo, where he later became an instructor, and acting. He started classes at HB Studio, but later studied with Penny Templeton.
At a reading of James Purdy's, he was introduced to John Uecker (read the Wikipedia article) and began classes with him in Kim Stanley technique.
