I’ve worked in enterprise networking and security for close to thirty years — building systems for government and private-sector clients that had to work in the real world, not just on paper. Cisco, Palo Alto, Juniper, Aruba, Fortinet, Arista. SD-WAN, VXLAN, SASE. The kind of infrastructure that isn’t allowed to be wrong.

But when I turned 50, I realised I didn’t want to be defined by a job title anymore. Now I’m letting go of that old identity to become more of a leader, creator, and guide. This site is where I make that shift — moving from just doing the work to leading the conversation about it.

How I See the World

Most failure is structural, not personal. Systems determine the floor; discipline only determines the ceiling — without something to hold intelligence and intent in place, both dissipate. Autonomy is won through what you refuse, not what you agree to. Complexity without operational resilience is just failure, delayed. And quiet authority compounds longer than loud influence ever does.

I think we’re at a real inflection point with AI — not a demo-stage curiosity but something that changes how organisations have to think about risk, judgment, and who’s accountable when a system acts on its own. The gap between “it works in the demo” and “it works safely in production” is where the actual expertise lives, and most teams don’t have anyone who’s stood in that gap. That’s the work now: translating what actually breaks into decisions leaders can make and stand behind.

Background

Computer Engineering by training. Almost thirty years in the field since — enterprise network architecture and security, in government and private-sector environments where “it worked in the lab” was never good enough. I’ve spent that time building and defending the infrastructure other things get to assume is just there.

What I’m Building Now

AI Security for Leaders is the current chapter — practitioner-grounded frameworks for the leaders who have to govern, secure, and deploy AI systems, and own what happens next. Not hype, not doom: what actually breaks in production, and what to do about it. You’ll find the frameworks and field notes at /ai-security/, and the weekly brief at /newsletter/. When a leadership team needs this applied to their specific deployment, I run private AI-security briefings — the door is a LinkedIn message with the word “briefing.”

This site — Thought Garden — is the archive underneath all of it: the frameworks, the essays, the occasional detour into whatever else is alive for me that week.

Separately, and more quietly, I’ve spent real time building my own AI-augmented way of running my own life — goals, health, family, work, all in one system I actually use. I think personal AI infrastructure like this is the precursor to a bigger shift in how people operate day to day, not a productivity trick. It’s a lab, not a product. If that changes, you’ll hear about it here first.

Values

I call it the Congruent Life — work, health, family, and meaning that don’t compete with each other. Fifteen-plus years married, two young sons, and the explicit refusal to let “busy” become the only way they experience their father. Sovereignty matters as much as income: the whole point of doing this work is to own more of my own time, not less.

Systems before discipline. Ship before overdesign kicks in. The right work, at the right time, for the right reasons.

What I Read, What I’m Learning

Frankl on meaning under constraint. Arthur Brooks on the second half of a career actually being the more interesting one. James Clear on systems over goals. Cal Newport on protecting deep work. Todd Herman on identity. Ray Dalio on radical transparency. Greg McKeown on subtraction as a strategy.

Right now I’m deep in agentic AI and LLM security architecture, and in the craft of the thing I’m doing on this site — how a senior practitioner actually becomes a recognised voice, in public, without turning into a costume.

The End of Waiting

Even after I figured out how to start, I kept putting off when to begin. I told myself I needed the perfect setup: a quiet house, lots of energy, no interruptions. But as a senior engineer and a parent of two, that never happens. Planning for a stress-free time that wasn’t coming just meant more waiting.

This page is where the waiting finally stops.

If you want to follow along or talk shop, I’m on LinkedIn and GitHub. And if AI risk just landed on your desk, message me — a briefing is the fastest door.