I love creating things, especially things that are useful.
Builder first. Leader because the building demanded it.
I've been writing software for more than twenty years and leading teams for the last eight. The transition wasn't a career ladder move. It happened because the systems I was building got big enough that the bottleneck stopped being code and started being people, priorities, and clarity about what we were actually trying to do.
Today I'm the CTO at Clarity Voice, a communications company that has spent over twenty years serving multi-location businesses. My team turned that platform into something new: an AI-powered conversation intelligence company. We did it by teaching the people already there, including non-engineers, to build the tools that automate their own work. That experience is the foundation of everything else I do, because it proved the thesis I now teach: you don't need a research lab to ship production AI. You need a guide, an operating practice, and a team willing to fish.
Outside the day job I co-organize Detroit TechWatch, hold a charter membership in the vCon Foundation, speak on the conference circuit, and write the AI Bytes newsletter. The common thread is the same conviction: the gap between AI ambition and working software is smaller than the industry wants you to believe.
How I'm wired
I find the bunny holes
My audit style is comparing what the documentation promises against what the implementation actually does, and hunting for incomplete loops: places where a design promises something the build never closes. Most failed AI projects die in a bunny hole nobody mapped.
I hold the whole system in my head
I think of software as arrangements of higher-order functions and aggregations. That mental model lets me reason about a large system end to end and spot where value is being created or quietly lost.
I speak both languages
Twenty years as an engineer, eight leading teams. I can talk architecture with engineers and business outcomes with CEOs in the same meeting without losing either audience. That bridge is the job.
I ship fast with a quality floor
Move fast and fix what breaks, not move fast and break things. There is a difference. I ship to production quickly, iterate in the open, and never leave a known quality gap unaddressed.
The path
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2025 – today
Chief Technology Officer, Clarity Voice
Accountable for engineering, platform operations, and AI product direction at a communications company serving franchises, restaurants, and auto dealerships. Took a twenty-year VoIP platform and built a conversation intelligence layer on top of it by teaching the team already there, including non-engineers, to build the tools that automate their own work.
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2022 – 2025
Director of Technology and Development, Clarity Voice
Made the jump from principal engineer to leading the whole engineering org. Kept writing production code the entire time, because the best architecture conversations happen when the person drawing the boxes still ships.
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2021 – 2022
Senior Full Stack Developer, Intrepid Control Systems
Helped transform large monolithic software products into lean microservices for an automotive tooling company. A reminder that decomposition is a people problem wearing a software costume.
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2013 – 2021
Application Developer to Principal Engineer, Clarity Voice
Joined as a developer, became principal engineer in 2017. A decade of building the systems I would later be accountable for, which is the kind of context you cannot hire for.
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2000 – 2013
Co-founder and Application Developer, SiteWorks Studio
Co-founded a studio and built the work for over a decade. Where the love of building became a craft and a business: shipping real software for real clients, long before it was my title anywhere else.
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2000
“Get a computer, we’re going into the computer business”
My dad called out of nowhere: “Mike, get a computer, we’re going into the computer business.” What he really meant was that he’d learned to build websites. I spent a week in New York with him and his girlfriend, a graphic designer, and found my passion. I’ve always gravitated toward building. I love creating things, especially things that are useful.
Want the longer version?
The fastest way to know how I think is to hear me talk about something we shipped, or ask me about yours.