I’m always exploring the latest AI tools, figuring out how they can make our work better. AI is evolving fast—what wasn’t ready for production just months ago is now polished and powerful. But I’ve learned it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. It needs human guidance to truly shine, and that’s where I come in, blending my expertise with AI to deliver results that matter.

Experts who can balance AI’s potential with hands-on know-how are in high demand, and I’ve been putting that balance to work in some exciting ways:

• Building ML & AI models with Python to spot security anomalies
• Using agents to build pipelines and web pages, cutting months of work down to days.
• Creating detailed marketing plans, from deep market analysis to customer engagement strategies.

I’ve always been drawn to the big picture—turning complex challenges into streamlined success. Whether it’s overseeing platforms that drive millions in revenue or guiding teams through high-stakes transitions, I love finding ways to make processes smarter and more efficient. For me, it’s about building systems that not only work but thrive under pressure.

I’ve had the chance to put that approach into action, delivering results that teams and businesses can count on:

• Leading a program of 15+ departments, 100+ employees to standardize operations and correct long-standing quality issues
• Managing a $200M platform, cutting onboarding time from 6 months to 3 with smart hybrid solutions.
• Leading a $2M security overhaul and standardized 800+ deployed workstations, boosting operational reliability.

Secure SDLC doesn't have to slow development down. I've built over 100 CI/CD pipelines with security engineering baked in, automating scans and letting developers address security issues before deployment.

Using Lean principles, I focus on integrating security and automating pipelines to eliminate security risk and manual work:

• Leading company-wide threat modeling and rolling out tools like Burp Suite to over 200 sites.
• Reducing deployment times to under 5 minutes from developer push to prod deployment in Kubernetes, EKS, and ECS.
• Migrating legacy systems from on-prem to AWS with zero downtime

I'm an old-school self-taught dev who's never left the keyboard. I'm always learning new languages, frameworks, and tools. Even when I've had fun as a Technical Program/Product Manager, I was still writing code to smooth out our processes and manage our teams.

I've had fun with everything from writing C++ code that ran in ring-0 of the windows kernel to a monolithic PHP app (ok, so that wasn't so fun, lol). I've written brainy stuff like high-transaction, high-availability multithreaded apps and a billion lines of mind-numbing bash scripts.

Lately I've been using windsurf to make updates to my nextjs app. Here are some details:

• Fullstack nextjs app and several stand-alone backend service apps
• MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, Socket.io
• 30+ deployments, all running on Kubernetes
• A host of repo-management and buildtools to create a consistent, uniform development ecosystem. After all, I'm still actively maintaining ~80 repos my own code.

In the Nashville/Brentwood/Franklin area? Join our Foundry 615 Monthly Meetup for founders and startups .

While I was launching a couple of my own products in 2010-2014, I was being trained in Lean Six Sigma and Agile at my corporate job. At the same time I was intrduced to "Lean Startup" by Eric Ries.

After being extensively trained and having my own sucees (and failures!), I wanted to see if I could take a sub-section of the corporate-level Lean principles and apply them to main-streat business and local startups.

I was an advisor for the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and SBA for a couple years and have lately been hanging out at Founder University (run by Jason Calicanis), one of the early-stage incubators I have the privilege of working with.

Here's a small sample of the fun I'm having:

• Guiding over 100 small businesses on pitching their products to HSN. This was an eye-opener for me to see first hand how founders needed to adapt their pitch in a way that would be appealing to a national audience. and the HSN judges. We had a 36% success rate, which was unheard of at the time.
• Too many startups and founders to mention, usually 2-3 per quarterly cohort for several years. I was (and am) constantly surprised at the ingenuity and creativity of the founders.
• I still hang out at Founder University , they usually run 3-4 cohorts per year of 300+ founders. They have an easy application process - tell them I sent you.