About PROF C
Helping leaders understand what technology is actually doing to their business, their people, and their judgment, through the research that’s already been published.
I have spoken at the following orgs
Columbia Business Times Feature
your story and mine overlap more than you might think
I spent over twenty years running a technology business before I ever stood in front of a classroom.
I loved the work, but what I kept noticing was this: the people making the biggest decisions about technology usually understood it the least. Not because they weren’t smart, but because nobody was translating it for them. The people who understood it were busy building it, and the people explaining it were usually selling something.
That gap is what pulled me into teaching. For years at the University of Missouri, my whole job was to take complicated, fast-moving technology and make a room full of people actually understand it and care about it. I directed the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, won some teaching awards, wrote the books and the papers, and taught on several continents.
Then I realized the gap I’d been closing in the classroom had opened up everywhere else as the pace of technological change accelerated. Leaders, teams, and whole industries were making high-stakes calls about AI and emerging technology based on headlines and hype, with no one to read the actual research for them. So that became my work.
That’s probably why you’re here. You know technology is reshaping your world, and you’re tired of guessing. You don’t have time to read the research, and you can’t always tell who to trust. I read it so you don’t have to, and I bring it back in plain language you can use. No hype, no doom. Just what’s actually true and why it matters to you, delivered in a way you’ll actually remember.
My Story
I never set out to be a professor. For over twenty years I ran Kaleidoscope Videoconfernencing, my own information technology business, doing the hands-on work... project management, information security, video conferencing systems back before anyone had heard of Zoom. I even co-authored a book on virtual classrooms in the mid-90s, betting that one day people would learn and work over video. I was right, just early.
What I noticed across all those years stuck with me. The people who had to make the biggest decisions about technology were almost never the people who understood it best. Executives, boards, and teams were betting real money and real futures on tools they’d had explained to them by someone with something to sell. The honest, careful information existed... it was sitting in research and in the heads of the people building these things... but nobody was bridging the two. That gap bothered me enough to change careers over it.
So I went into teaching at the University of Missouri. The job, stripped down, was exactly that bridge: take emerging technology like AI, blockchain, and the internet of things, and help students think clearly and critically about it instead of just reacting to it. I directed the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, helping people turn ideas into real ventures. I won teaching awards I’m proud of, wrote books and articles, and taught and lectured around the world, from Ukraine to South Africa.
The turning point came when I realized the thing I’d spent years doing in the classroom... reading the research, cutting through the noise, making it make sense... was exactly what leaders outside the university needed and almost never got. The hype had only gotten louder. The decisions had only gotten higher-stakes. And the gap between what the research actually said and what people believed had only gotten wider. That is why I stepped away from my full time position in academia, to help people develop the clarity they needed to take action.
That’s the work I do now, follow the research on how technology works, how it’s being used, and what it’s actually doing to us, and I bring it back in plain language people can act on. Today that ranges from keynotes for leaders trying to make sense of AI, to building entrepreneurship programs from the ground up, like the one I’m currently running for students in Nukus, Uzbekistan.
And here’s where you come in, because your story and mine overlap more than you might think. You know technology is reshaping your industry and your work. You can feel the ground moving. But you’re busy doing your actual job, you don’t have time to read every paper, and you can’t always tell the genuine experts from the loudest voices. So you end up making important decisions on a mix of headlines, hunches, and hope, and some part of you knows that’s not good enough.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Imagine making these calls with confidence, because they’re grounded in what the research actually shows. Imagine your team understanding the technology instead of fearing it, and knowing exactly what to do next. That’s what I help people reach. I’ve spent my whole career closing the gap between what’s true and what people believe about technology. Let me close it for you.
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