Head of Product at Verdance · Principal at Matrix-Digital · and the obligatory LinkedIn
I'm a product manager who decided the best response to AI was to stop hedging and just face it head on.
My current obsession: can I build the AI that replaces me? Not as a thought experiment, but as a practical goal. If I can, I'll understand the impact to our craft and evolve. If I can't, at least I'll know it's time to train for the Olympic cloud architecture decathlon. Either way, beats hoping nobody notices.
AI for legacy modernization. Most of the world runs on systems that were never meant to last this long. I help organizations modernize them using AI, without blowing everything up in the process. Can I use these rapidly evolving digital tools to make a difference in our analog world?
Building AI competency within companies and communities. AI tools are powerful, but tools are a catalyst, not a source. The real spark is people. I prepare people to develop durable AI skills, the kind that hold up when the hype cycle bottoms out and everyone's suddenly a disillusioned expert skeptic. Because one day they won't be AI skills. Just skills.
Products for everyday people. My work spans from mission critical government systems to playful products for my kids. The common thread: I want the benefits of AI to reach people who weren't already positioned to take advantage of it.
AI is going to widen the gap between the people who understand it and the people who don't, unless we're deliberate about closing it. I'm not interested in building tools just for those who already have everything. I want AI to be accessible, useful, and good for society in ways that actually matter.
Okay, that might sound a bit soap-boxy. But it sure does get me going in the morning.
I started as a software engineer and architect at Motorola, which means I'm reasonably dangerous when technical conversations go sideways. From there I moved into product, then into building and leading teams across telecom, health insurance, and government digital services.
The government chapter is where things got interesting. At 18F, I helped transform how federal agencies build and think about software. At Login.gov, I led product and operations for what became the federal government's shared identity platform, growing it from 10 million accounts to over 100 million, scaling agency integrations from fewer than 20 to over 200, and securing a $187M Technology Modernization Fund investment. Now at CMS, I'm working on modernizing the Medicare payment system, infrastructure that processes billions of dollars in payments every year (no pressure).
Growing up as the kid of a UN official, I lived across countries and cultures before I knew what a career was. That upbringing taught me that multiple perspectives on the same problem aren't noise, they're the signal. It built empathy, it built range, and it gave me a few languages along the way. I think about AI the same way: it's not just a tool, it's a new language and a new culture. The people who take time to understand it on its own terms will do a lot more with it than those who treat it as a faster search engine. Spoiler: it's not a search engine.
More recent work is still under wraps, but some of it will be making its way public in the coming months. Until then, just know that the range of projects has exposed me to a myriad of experiences and allowed me to develop perspectives and a breadth of skills you don't get from staying in one lane.
If you're trying to make something more equitable, more accessible, less broken, or just better for the people who use it, and you're wondering where AI fits into that, I'm interested.
Especially if you've figured out how to use AI to make me a better snowboarder, a stronger climber, or a faster triathlete, you've found the holy grail.
Yep, definitely used agents to help with the writing, but the dad-joke humor is 100% mine.