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I lead Product & Alliances at The Select Group (TSG). I’m a husband, a dad, a builder, a Purple Heart recipient, and somebody who has spent almost thirty years studying what new technology does to the way organizations operate, then building the thing that lets them run that way. I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, with my wife Jenelle and our son Ford.
What am I doing this month? Check out my now page.
What I’m working on now
I joined TSG in early 2026 and took over Product & Alliances in July. The job is to take what our consultants are learning about emerging technology, decide what’s worth turning into an offering, and build the partner network that brings it to market.
Right now that mostly means digital twins and simulation. In October we launched TSG/ControlBurn with our alliance partner Frenos. We build a digital twin of a client’s OT environment from data they already collect (firewall and router configurations, asset inventories, vulnerability exports) and run adversary simulations against the twin instead of the live network. Most OT networks still get tested once a year. Nobody would accept checking a turbine once a year and calling it monitored. The right time to validate is when something changes. Our whitepaper, The Assessment Half-Life, explains why the annual test ages out so fast.
I’m also standing up our simulation and digital twins practice, where engagements are priced against client outcomes instead of hours, and working with Planisware on AI-assisted strategic portfolio management. Here I write in public about operating models, simulation, and digital twins, and about humanoid robotics.
What I’m chasing
Most companies are perfectly capable of buying new technology and perfectly incapable of putting it to work. The gap between “we just deployed AI” and “AI is doing useful things for our customers” is wider than most CxOs are willing to admit. The bottleneck is almost never the technology. It’s the change capacity of the organization receiving it, and the people who are needed to operationalize it.
I’ve been on both sides of that gap as an executive and as a consultant. I write about closing it, and at TSG I build products that close it. It’s also why I stopped saying “transformation.” It implies a finish line. Continuous modernization is the job.
How I got here
Every chapter of my career has been the same question asked about a different technology: what does this change about how an organization runs? I’ve answered it from five seats.
Founder. I started a couple of businesses as a teenager, including 16327Online, a rural internet service provider and web studio, in 1997. Later I founded Mattis & Co and grew it into a specialized consultancy serving enterprise clients internationally. Through one of its engagements I led Under Armour’s global military and tactical business as a Global Product Manager, helping grow it roughly fivefold over three years. Mattis & Co merged into SolutionsIQ in 2017, and Accenture acquired SolutionsIQ later that year.
Engineer. After the Army I moved into engineering at VeriSign and became an engineering manager.
Architect. Architecture came with the job at VeriSign. At Accenture I was a Senior Manager in Advanced Engineering and Architecture. At Scaled Agile I led the function as VP of Partnerships, Sales Engineering, and Solution Architecture.
Consultant. Mattis & Co first, then Accenture, where I ran a practice in Austin and carried P&L accountability.
Executive. At Laureate, a network of 86 universities, we rebuilt how the organization developed degree programs and cut development time by 75%. At Scaled Agile I built a partner ecosystem from zero to more than $20M in annual partner-influenced revenue and advised more than 450 firms. I hosted Business Agility Now from 2021 to 2025 and became a SAFe Fellow in 2021.
Storytelling has been part of the work, too. I owned Orion’s Kin Media from 2013 to 2016 and produced Orion’s Kin TV for the Pursuit Channel. Today I own 58 Nights Media, which publishes my books, Small Firm, Big Impact and The Performance Machine. One side bet on bike manufacturing, Valor Cycles, didn’t work out, but it taught me a lot about rapid prototyping (and it’s where I first worked with digital twins).
Iraq is in there too, between the early businesses and the engineering work. On December 8, 2005, 1LT Kevin J. Smith was killed protecting me and others in our convoy from a targeted attack outside Baghdad. Medical retirement, Purple Heart, a life I wouldn’t have without him.
The Most Important Stuff
Jenelle has been alongside through many of the chapters above, including the ones where I needed to be reminded I was still a fun and silly person. Ford showed up in February 2025 and reorganized me in the most beautiful ways possible. The Mattis Foundation, which Jenelle and I started in July 2025, runs the Kevin J. Smith Memorial Scholarship and takes care of the community where it can. Leading my family and team in that is what I would continue if all other work stopped.
I run trails most days and lift heavy a couple times a week. When I can get there, I take my Porsche 911 to Virginia International Raceway. Before that it was motocross, for years. Anything that punishes you for not paying attention has always been the cleanest way I’ve found to clear my head.
Why subscribe?
You’ll get first-person notes on what digital twins, simulation, and AI change about how enterprises operate, and what I’m learning from building products and partnerships around them at TSG. Expect the occasional military-perspective aside, and the personal stuff that comes with being a husband, a dad, and a guy with a few miles on him.
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