I spent more than twenty years in the corporate technology world; writing code, managing engineering teams, running P&Ls, turning around failing product lines, and helping companies transform the way they worked. I was a VP of Engineering before I was forty. I co-founded a startup that launched the first commercially available Linux-based consumer tablet. I consulted for energy companies, oilfield services firms, and government agencies, helping them modernize operations and build teams that could actually deliver.
Then I walked into a high school classroom. By choice.
The instinct to teach goes back further than most people might expect.
My senior year of high school, my geometry teacher was out sick the day before an exam. The substitute didn’t understand the material and the students, my friends, were panicking. The administration pulled me out of another class and asked if I could help.
When I walked in, they called my name and all started talking at once. I just started laughing. After the noise settled to a reasonable level, I found myself saying things only teachers say: “One at a time. Raise your hand. How about we walk through some problems together as a group?” One by one they gave me problems and I worked through them on the board, answering questions as I went. I started hearing the aha moments. One student asked me, “How come I understand this so clearly when you teach it, but not when Mrs. Newberg teaches it?” I told him honestly that I didn’t know, because I understood her just fine. From the back of the room, a good friend of mine hollered, “I can’t believe it! I understand math for the first time in my life!”
I don’t know how my friends did on the exam. But I have never forgotten how excited they were to learn, or how it felt to be the reason why.
Decades later, when I started thinking seriously about what the next chapter looked like, teaching kept coming back. I spent years in the corporate world setting professionals up for success; coaching executives, transforming teams, and helping organizations bring their products and services to market. With my own children approaching high school, I began reflecting on how different the working world really was compared to what they taught me in school. I wanted to bring my wealth of experience to the classroom to see if I could fill that gap and help a new generation of students prepare to be successful in a new way. I worried about the disinterest and immaturity that comes with the territory, and I worried about the detour I would be taking from my own career, but I wanted to go in anyway; not just for my own kids, but for theirs. I thought if I could help prepare the next generation for the world they were actually going to inherit, that was work worth doing.
So I got certified in computer science and mathematics, and I stepped into the classroom.
What I found there changed how I think about almost everything.
Some of what I found was much harder than I expected. Some of it was better. My favorite moments in the classroom are when the kids are loud, excited and out of their seats, but the conversation is all about the assignment. The first time that happened, I almost raised my voice to quiet them down; until I realized they were arguing about math. I just sat back, smiled, and took it in.
When I taught my first Computer Science class, the gap between the classroom environment and the workplace was immediately apparent. The tools were different. The problems were different. The entire frame – what it means to think like an engineer, work on a team, build something real – was absent. The curriculum delivered small, important pieces of the pie, but not the whole pie. For example, the browser-based edtech platform allowed students to run a small program with a simple click and I wondered at what point they would learn how to traverse their laptop’s file system, compile their own code, and use various debugging tools. It turns out that answer was never. On the upside, it presented me with a wonderful problem where I could apply my expertise.
Then AI arrived in the classroom, and the gap got wider.
I watched students learn to use AI to bypass the hard thinking rather than to accelerate it. They were getting answers without building discernment; the ability to evaluate a solution, catch an error, and decide what question to ask next. Discernment is precisely what the AI-driven workplace demands more of, not less. Students who cannot think critically without AI assistance are not more employable in an AI world. They are less.
I have seen and addressed this from the inside. I also have extensive experience on the other side; in the room when engineering decisions get made, in the meetings where junior hires either prove themselves or they don’t. I understand both sides of this gap in a way that very few people do; not because I have studied it, but because I have lived it. And I care about it.
That’s what this site is about.
I write here about what the AI era actually demands from education, what industry is genuinely looking for in the people it hires, and what students and teachers can do right now to close the distance between the two. My perspective isn’t theoretical. It is built from shipping software, running teams, facilitating classroom learning, and watching what happens when those two worlds collide.
I consult with organizations and districts working to build curriculum, programs, and training that actually prepare people, students and professionals alike, for the work that’s in front of them.
If something I have written resonates, or if you are working on a problem that sounds like mine, I’d like to hear from you.
