I’ve usually been the one who had to figure it out.

My career has taken me through enterprise infrastructure, consulting, and running a managed service business. I’ve spent plenty of time hands-on with systems. I’ve also had to explain to a leader why we needed to spend money on one, or why the proposed answer wasn’t the one I’d choose.

In hospital information-systems leadership, I reported to the CEO. I was responsible for technology operations, budgets, vendors, business continuity, and security, including serving as HIPAA Security Officer. When something went wrong, I couldn’t stop at explaining the technical problem. I had to help work out what we were going to do about it.

That experience still affects how I work. An engineer may need to understand a dependency or a recovery step. The person approving the cost needs to know what happens if we leave it alone and what the proposed change will buy us. I need to understand both well enough to explain them plainly.

Today my work is in infrastructure, automation, and the platforms that run it. I still like getting into the details. I also want to know who will look after the result when I’m not there.

There are things I can build now that I couldn’t realistically have done by myself a few years ago. AI helps me research a platform, try a design, write the code, and work through failures while I learn. I’ve gone from infrastructure scripts to web applications and an iOS app.

I don’t mistake that for already knowing the new technology. I still have to ask good questions, check the result, and recognize when I need someone with more experience in that area. I’ve had AI work pass its checks and still fail in production. I’ve also written checks that rejected work that was right.

That’s why I’m interested in what AI lets me do and in what it gets wrong. Both have changed how I work.

I’m a Christian, a Navy veteran, a husband, father, and grandfather. I work with wood and maintain land. There’s usually something that needs building or fixing.

I served as commander of Operation Diamond Forge 2026, where I also built the apps staff used for registration, rosters, schedules, and paperwork. I’ve built a public site and records system for a volunteer cemetery association, too.

Those jobs brought different questions. Could staff get the right roster on a phone? Could a board member answer a family’s question while standing at the cemetery? I enjoy working out what would help and then making it work.