Psychology background
- Product development
- Engineering leadership
- FDA-regulated AI
My undergraduate background is in psychology. I didn't study systems. I studied how people think, what they need, and what breaks down when those needs aren't met. That lens never left me. It's why I approach product development the way I do: hypothesis-driven, research-grounded, built around real user behavior rather than assumptions.
That foundation led me into engineering, and engineering led me to the hardest technical problems I could find. Regulated healthcare AI isn't the obvious path for someone with a psychology degree, but it makes complete sense when you understand that the goal was always the same: build things that work for real people in real situations, and don't fail them when the stakes are high.
Over 10+ years I moved from engineering into leadership, from consumer products into regulated environments, from individual contributor to the person responsible for systems that affect patient outcomes. Each step made the work harder and more meaningful.
Phoenixing LLC is the practice I built so other companies could access that compounded experience without waiting a decade to develop it themselves.
AI-powered conversation-to-workflow platform for nonprofits, behavioral health, and case management. Auto-generates SOAP notes, intake forms, and compliance filings from a single intake conversation. Built to HIPAA and SOC 2 standards from the ground up.
An invite-only builder collective on a shared equity model. A service layer funds operations while products ramp. Five founding members building across healthcare, fintech, and creator tools.
My psychology background shapes how I build technical teams, write PRDs, evaluate risk, and design systems that real humans operate under pressure. A HIPAA-compliant architecture isn't just a technical spec. It's a set of decisions about what happens when a clinician is exhausted at 2am and makes an error. The system has to hold.
I use hypothesis-driven frameworks for product development, treating every feature as an experiment with a measurable outcome. I've seen what happens when teams build on assumptions instead of evidence. In regulated environments, those assumptions cost more than time.
This is the lens I bring to every engagement. Not just "does it work technically" but "does it hold up when the humans using it are under pressure, under-resourced, and operating in an environment with real consequences."
I built this community because the industry needed it to exist
Not as a resume line. As a response to watching talented people get filtered out of opportunities they were more than qualified for.
Tech by Choice started small and grew to 10,000+ engineers, designers, and product people from underrepresented backgrounds building careers in tech. It's built on the principle that representation in tech isn't a pipeline problem. It's a structural one, and the most direct fix is connecting people directly to opportunities and to each other.
Every company I work with gets access to this network. Not as a checkbox. As a genuine competitive advantage. The people in TBC are vetted, engaged, and actively looking for companies worth working for. If you're building something meaningful in regulated healthcare and you're committed to a diverse team, this is where your next hire comes from.
Running TBC also keeps me grounded in what's actually happening in the industry: what skills are scarce, what problems teams are running into, what tools are changing how people work. That context makes me a better technical advisor, not just a more connected one.
Undergraduate background in psychology. Still the most useful thing I've ever studied. Every hypothesis-driven PRD, every user flow, every team dynamic decision traces back to it.
Find me as @DigitalBlkHippy across all platforms where I write about regulated AI, the fractional CTO model, and building technology that actually works for people who need it.
