Twenty-plus years of learning what makes systems friction-free
Rigging, audio, networks, vendor engineering, transformation consulting — different rooms, same discipline: understand the whole system before you touch any one part of it.
Rigger. Network engineer. Assistant Fire Chief & EMT. Senior executive. Sailor. Father. Different rooms, same throughline.
In technical theatre my focus was audio and rigging, but I made a point of learning what mattered to every other department — lighting, video, wardrobe, stage management. Once you understand what another department actually needs, you start noticing when a small change in your own work could make a real difference to theirs. A small impact to me could lead to a greater benefit for the whole.
That habit — zoom in to find the root cause, zoom out to understand the real goal and the real constraints, then design the optimal solution within them — is the throughline from a catwalk in a touring venue to a boardroom conversation about org design. I am driven by reducing friction for people and for processes. Things shouldn’t be difficult.
The cable that had to cross the pipe
A new touring show came through with an audio cable that had to cross an elevated pipe from one side of the stage to the other. Every venue was built differently, so the crew had to figure out, city by city, which direction the cable needed to run over that pipe — and if it went up wrong, we redid the work to fix it. That decision, made under time pressure, on a new stage, every single day.
By the third city, we’d built gender turnarounds for both ends of the cable, so it could go up the same way every time, with the right adapter added for that day’s configuration. One small, permanent fix removed a daily, time-sensitive decision — and the wasted effort that came with getting it wrong.
It’s the same move I look for in an enterprise data pipeline, an incident command structure, or a board’s meeting process: find the one recurring decision that shouldn’t have to be a decision at all, and design it away.
From the rigging plot to the network diagram
Rigger, audio engineer, stagehand
Years of professional stage rigging, live audio engineering, and general stagehand work on tours and in venues. Alongside it, I owned and ran Those Guys Mobile DJs.
Network Technician & Systems Administrator
Installed and ran networks for Michigan State University and the Upholstery Division of LADD Furniture — the Clayton Marcus, Barclay, and Pennsylvania House brands.
Cisco, then Arista
Moved from operating networks to building the technology behind them, first at Cisco and then at Arista.
Network to Code
Helped build and grow NTC while fractionally delivering transformation for clients: building new teams, performing detailed process and procedural analysis, designing new org structures and process, and driving teams toward single-source-of-truth data synchronization, better data quality, and automated, AI-enabled processes — including for one of the largest Fortune 100 global financial institutions.
Executive, Chief, Sailor, Father
Exploring CEO roles in mission-driven organizations, serving as an Assistant Fire Chief & EMT, sailing and boating the Carolina coast, and raising a family around all of it.