From operations to AI, not around it.
I didn't start in tech. I started in the parts of a business that actually touch customers, and that turned out to be the best possible training for building AI systems people will actually use.
Where I started
I didn't start in tech. I started in insurance and compliance, where I spent fifteen years learning that the difference between a business that runs smoothly and one that's constantly firefighting usually comes down to process, not effort.
From there, I taught business and economics in Shanghai. It was a complete shift in environment, and it taught me how much clarity matters when you want a system, or a classroom, to run well without you standing over it every minute.
Back in the U.S., I moved into sales and account management, watching the same problem repeat across different businesses: talented people buried under manual work that a system should have been doing for them.
How that became AI
My path into AI started the way it does for a lot of people, a mentor asked if I'd tried ChatGPT. I hadn't. I started small, using it to sharpen emails and writing, then went down the rabbit hole: coloring books, journals, then GPTs, then a certification in AI consulting. Somewhere in there I started building small AI powered tools and even short AI generated video demos, pairing it with voiceover work I already loved. I haven't stopped since.
That pattern I kept seeing in every business I touched, the same handful of gaps costing owners time and money no matter the industry, is what pulled me deeper into building. So I started designing repeatable AI-powered systems to find and fix them instead of guessing.
What I care about
I'm not a developer who picked up consulting. I'm an operations person who found AI and hasn't wanted to put it down since, because it's the fastest way I've found to actually close those gaps, and because I genuinely love the process of building something and watching it work. Clarity over cleverness, always. A system that a non-technical team can actually run is worth more than an impressive one nobody trusts.