Most kids didn’t have $15,000 computers in their dad’s garage in 1979. Mine did—built from scratch, catalog parts, and pure faith. My dad took out a loan for that machine. Then he handed me a manual and said, “Figure it out.” I did. At 12, I wrote my first program to track dues for my Civil Air Patrol squad. When it worked, something clicked: I had instructed a machine to serve a purpose. That moment lit a fire that’s still burning.
Years later, I built Blackline to carry that same fire forward—not just to “make tech make sense,” but to equip leaders with the clarity to command it. That became Technology Intelligence (TQ): a framework forged from decades of translation work between chaos and outcomes. We’re not just solving IT problems—we’re restoring agency to the people who lead. Because in my world, complexity doesn’t get the last word—intelligent leadership does.
Hard things aren’t punishment—they’re the path. Whether it’s technology or your body, discomfort is how systems evolve and strength is revealed.
If you’re not defining the system, someone else is—and their priorities probably don’t match yours.
If you’re not defining the system, someone else is—and their priorities probably don’t match yours.
