Talking about lessons leaned in consulting that include problem solving, case studies, and organizational analysis.
When Hurricane Harvey disrupted normal academic operations across Texas, simply moving courses online was not enough. By creating a delayed-start, compressed 10-week semester, we helped students continue making academic progress while recognizing that many were dealing with displacement, property loss, and significant personal disruption.
One of the most valuable projects of my career wasn’t a major platform launch or a large technology initiative. It was a reporting system designed to eliminate a bottleneck and make itself unnecessary. Fifteen years after I left the organization, the system was still operating successfully, reinforcing a lesson that has shaped my approach to technology, process improvement, and leadership ever since: sustainable solutions create independence.
A faculty member approached me looking for a student staffing solution to manually transcribe a large portion of a 242-page nineteenth-century maritime diary. What they actually needed was a digital publishing workflow. By leveraging AI-assisted handwriting recognition, we bypassed hundreds of hours of manual transcription and transformed a historical artifact into a searchable research resource in a matter of weeks.