I am many things. I’m a technologist and technology leader. I’m also autistic, an artist, and a photographer.
But mostly, I’m just Ward.
Technology solves problems people care about, or it solves nothing. The leaders who still build remember which is which.
Lean asks one brutally simple question: would the customer pay for it? Most of what we called software engineering never passed that test — the boilerplate, the scaffolding, the integration glue, the ceremony.
Code was never the unit of value. Nobody bought lines of code. They bought a problem going away, and staying away.
AI compresses the part that was never the value. What’s left is the part that always was: systems design — what to build, which tradeoffs matter, where the failure modes hide.
The constraint was never typing speed. It’s the distance between what someone means and what the system does. That gap is human, not technical, and no model closes it.
The leaders who matter now are close enough to the work to close that gap themselves. In nearly five decades I have never made that gap someone else's job.
Founding senior engineer on AmazonFresh before it went national. AmazonTote from nothing to launched in two months. On Microsoft’s Azure incubation team: guerrilla marketing in malls, a honeypot company at GDC — whatever produced an answer. Founding engineer and CTO at ShiftHealth AI, then Lium AI — not two titles for the same job.
Varsity Tutors from $50M to $125M through an IPO at a $1.4B valuation. RealSelf to a 150-person globally distributed organization with 7× organic traffic. Sears Home Services from one engineer to thirty inside twelve months. Every one of those was remote-first before that was a word people used approvingly.
The agentic SDLC changed what a technology leader can personally hold. I run Monster Orange, ship production systems for clients, advise ShiftHealth AI, and deliver value through shipped code every day. Being close to the work is now the highest-leverage place a CTO can stand.
I’ve been working as a technology leader for over two decades for companies including Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft, Varsity Tutors, and RealSelf amongst others. Today I’m CTO and founding engineer at Lium AI, I run my own practice as Monster Orange, and I advise ShiftHealth AI on technology.
Since 2015, I’ve worked remotely as a technology executive from central Washington state.
I’m a technologist in the broadest sense. I’ve worked nearly every job within my organizations from data scientist to software developer to UX designer to product manager and aerospace engineer.
My focus as a leader is to create high-performing teams through a culture deeply rooted in understanding the psychological factors that yield results. In a word: psychological safety. I empower my people to step into the unknown, feel encouraged to fail, and through this process learn.
It’s a continual process that produces exponential results and innovation.
AI is the best amplifier I've been handed in nearly five decades of programming. It is not a replacement for the expert — it's a better suit for one.
Learn moreI often quip that the “T” in CTO stands for therapy, not technology; in so much that much of my responsibility is to promote collaboration amongst everyone in my organization and throughout the company.
Learn moreI've led remotely since 2015. It works — but not by accident, and not by announcing a policy. It takes five habits most companies never build.
Learn moreI've spent a lifetime learning about lean, starting with my father. I've worked as a Japanese interpreter with Shingijutsu, world leaders in lean consulting. And I'm an early adopter of the agile manifesto. I know lean.
Learn moreI have experience spanning multiple industry sectors from aerospace to retail to entertainment to education and now medical, which gives me a very broad view of adopting technology.
Learn moreI've worked on every scale of growth from idea generation to scrappy startup right up to world-class enterprise, providing a unique vantage on how to not only address each stage of growth, but navigate the transitions.
Learn moreEstablish critical path for strategic product-market fit
Working back from the customer, ensure unmet needs are satisfied
Facilitate multi-year vision to scale from scrappy monolithic system to enterprise-grade services-oriented architecture
From recruiting pipeline to organization development to career leveling and calibration, I help you create a culture that people crave
I’m available for both short-term and longer-term engagements. I currently consult with a broad spectrum of companies from pre-raise straight through Series-raise and beyond.
Engagements include cooperating with the CEO and head of engineering or product to advise on technology roadmap, strategic product roadmap, organizational development, and infrastructure and architecture.
Technology is fundamentally about solving human problems. Without our solutions being deeply rooted in the people who create and maintain it, we will fail to innovate.
I have worked with Ward at 3 companies, we have worked together as peers and he was also my direct report at RealSelf. Ward is one of the smartest humans I have ever met. From a work perspective, he is an expert architect, a great engineer and a fantastic people leader. I have seen him break apart monolithic infrastructure into SOA, and I have seen him completely rebuild teams from the ground up to. I would gladly recommend him.
Ward's one of the unicorns in the executive technology ranks leading from a place of empathy and compassion with great talent as a technologist and forward thinker. He's self-aware, humble but confident, a people first leader, and has great emotional intelligence that he applies to complex business situations. Anyone who brings Ward in as a board member, technical advisor or senior leader will be better off for it, raising their collective consciousness of their organization as a result.
Wicked smart, collaborative, engaging, thoughtful, authentic, always delivers — that's Ward. His combination of expertise (the “what”) and leadership style (the “how”) is truly remarkable and I saw it in action every day at RealSelf. He will make your organization and products better for customers (internal and external). Run — don't walk, to work with him.
As a technical and leadership advisor to Allakando, Ward is always super honest in his opinions and he is always pushing for what's best for the company. He is amazing at both the high-level strategic questions as well as the important details in our work. On a personal level it's also an absolute joy to work with Ward and I can't recommend him enough!
Ward is someone who makes me think in new ways. Ward is someone with whom I enjoy sharing time. In my time working at Varsity Tutors with Ward, I learned the importance of being authentic, open, and vulnerable. Ward made every meeting better. Ward made every person better. While the great divide of a continent and very different industries now separate us, I look forward to continuing to learn from Ward and hope we one day are able to share a meal and drink.
Ward has been a fantastic leader, mentor, and friend. He embodies the servant-leadership principles and leads with love. Ward believes in empowering teams to move quickly, to make mistakes, and to learn from (and celebrate!) those mistakes. Utilizing his deep wells of technical, product, and leadership experience, he is able to support any team or leader to achieve greatness. Ward is an excellent coach and mentor, providing kindly-candid, and thoughtful feedback. I have become a better leader thanks to my experience working with Ward — I consider myself truly lucky to have worked with him.
Ward, is a natural leader who goes out of his way to help. When you meet Ward you'll quickly realize he knows his stuff from product and technical strategy through to leading and growing people. You'll learn a lot from him!
I have great respect for Ward not only as a technology leader, but as a people leader. He cares fully about each and every member of his team and anyone he comes in contact with for that matter. Ward feels strongly about making available information that can successfully set people on their journey. Ward not only builds strong teams within the organizations he works for, he helps connect good people with the companies that he feels are a match as he believes in everyone being in the right place. I have partnered on many people-based projects with Ward and, even though I have been doing this for a long time, I learned a ton from our partnerships. Ward continually strives to be the best person he can and never stops learning and growing.
Conversational AI for complex data — it writes the code, builds the tools, and answers the question.
Learn moreMy own practice — technical advising and the products I build under my own name.
Learn moreAI-powered coach leveraging best-in-class LLM and agentic workflows. I built it, and still advise it.
Learn moreDramatic traffic turnaround on aggressive decline through sitewide SEO-focussed redesign.
Learn moreWe went from $50M to $125M in revenue and a fully-online learning experience on our own platform in three years — while transforming Engineering to world-class, enterprise-grade scale.
Learn moreAs head of engineering, I recruited and hired our engineering organization; growing from just myself to 30 souls in twelve months.
Learn moreI spear-headed the cloud-based console experience that powers all of Xbox One barring only a few services.
Learn moreAmazonFresh, AmazonTote, and Retail Customer Experience (RCX).
Learn moreA new generation of software to analyze all flight regimes of Boeing airplanes.
Learn moreTools are not a philosophy. But a leader who can’t name theirs probably isn’t building. This is what I actually have my hands in.
Booking time is the fastest way to reach me. If a conversation isn’t the right shape yet, email works too.
Nell Derick Debevoise interviewed me in 2021 as part of her research for her book Going First: Your Invitation to Find the Courage to Lead Purposefully and Inspire Action, now available on Amazon.