I work with founders and technical leaders who keep hitting the same wall — teams that stop trusting each other, decisions that get made twice, risks that nobody's willing to name out loud.
I'm part coach, part outside counsel. I get brought in when something feels off and nobody inside can see it clearly anymore — or is willing to say it.
Because herding cats is too easy.
Recognition
Your CTO and CPO haven't agreed on anything in months — and the team has started working around them instead of with them.
Decisions get made twice. Made in a meeting, then quietly revisited in the hallway, then made again the following week. Nobody's sure which version is the real one.
AI tools are spreading across the company. Some people are excited, some are nervous, and nobody has a clear answer for what's actually allowed or who's responsible.
A new technical leader is struggling. Your best engineer just got promoted and it's not going well. Everyone can see it. Nobody wants to say it.
The founder has become the default mediator for everything — every disagreement, every priority call, every stuck decision routes back to one person.
Strong-willed leaders have stopped listening. Not because they don't care, but because they've stopped trusting that the other side is hearing them.
This isn't a talent problem. You hired well. The people are capable, driven, and smart.
This is an alignment problem. And it tends to get worse, not better, on its own.
Why It Works
Proximity blindness.
People inside the organization are too close to see what's actually happening. The dysfunction has become the baseline. It doesn't register as a problem anymore — it just feels like "how things are." The founder, the leadership team, the board — they're all operating inside the same system, with the same blind spots.
Political paralysis.
People inside the organization can see the problem — but they aren't willing to name it. Maybe it's the founder's behavior. Maybe it's a VP who's become untouchable. Maybe it's a decision that was made badly and nobody wants to reopen. The cost of speaking up feels higher than the cost of staying quiet. So everyone stays quiet. And the problem compounds.
Both of these require the same thing: someone trusted, external, and willing to be candid. Someone with no internal politics to protect. Someone who can walk into the room, see what's actually going on, and say it clearly enough that the right people can act on it.
That's my role. Part coach, part outside counsel. Not a consultant who produces a report and leaves. Not a coach who asks how you feel about it. The person you call before it becomes a crisis.
The Work
Every engagement starts the same way: a conversation. No pitch, no proposal, no commitment. I ask hard questions and show you what I see. If there's a fit, we go from there.
~2 weeks
A structured diagnostic across leadership alignment, cross-functional friction, decision architecture, and AI governance. The goal is to surface what's actually going on — where decisions break down, where friction shows up, and where the real risks are. The deliverable is a candid verbal brief and a clear picture of what needs to happen next, in what order.
This is not a 40-page report. The value is what gets said in the room — synthesis and judgment, not documentation.
30–45 days
Sometimes the assessment reveals friction that needs hands-on work to resolve. When it does, this is a targeted engagement scoped to the specific issues — a leadership communication breakdown, a Product-Engineering-Ops realignment, AI governance foundation work, or something else entirely. Scope is defined after the assessment, not before, because the right intervention depends on what we actually find.
The goal is forward motion on the right things. Not a promise that everything is fixed — a promise that you'll know exactly where you stand and what comes next.
Ongoing
Long-term access to judgment. Available when something feels off, pulled into meetings when significant decisions are being made, providing real-time perspective on leadership dynamics, negotiation situations, AI decisions, and organizational risk.
Not a project. A relationship. The kind where you have someone in your corner who maintains enough context to be genuinely useful — not just reactive. Some clients get here after an assessment or intervention. Some know from the first conversation that this is what they need.
About
I've spent thirty years at the intersection of technology and business leadership — building teams, designing systems, and navigating the organizational friction that shows up when smart people are pulling in different directions.
I've built and led global IT and Security organizations through periods of rapid growth. I've designed enterprise architecture, led M&A technical diligence, achieved ISO 27001 certification, and hired over 150 people across multiple offices. I have an MBA from Virginia Tech and formal training in negotiation and conflict resolution through 88 Owls, where I now serve as a mentor.
But the technology was rarely the real problem. The misalignment was.
The patterns I kept seeing — leaders who had stopped trusting each other, decisions that couldn't stay decided, risks that everyone could see but nobody would name — those were the real problems. And they were the ones nobody was addressing.
Herding Wolves is what happens when you stop treating the symptoms and start working on the system. I help founders and technical leaders see what they can't see about their own organization — and do something about it before it becomes a real crisis.
Pattern Recognition
Thirty years of cross-functional leadership, building the instinct to see what's actually broken before being told.
Negotiations & Conflict
Formally trained in negotiation dynamics. Bringing structure to situations most leaders navigate by instinct alone.
Diagnostic Candor
The willingness to name what others in the room see but won't say. Not a comfortable skill. An essential one.
Technical Fluency
Deep roots in systems architecture, IT, and security. Fluent in the language of every function at the table.
What Others Say
Korey was brought in to not only build an IT team but support an entire organization going through rapid growth across the board. He was successful in both endeavors. I appreciated his attitude and passion for a positive work environment for his team and its members. If I was starting a new business Korey would be one of my first calls.
Korey built an incredibly talented IT team and oversaw the implementation of the infrastructure to support diverse IT and information security needs. He is skilled at seeing the big picture as well as all the details and excels at explaining his concerns in a very understandable, straightforward manner.
He is skilled at seeing the big picture as well as all the details — and excels at explaining his concerns in a very understandable, straightforward manner.
Most of the founders I work with don't arrive with a clear diagnosis. They arrive with a feeling — something isn't right, and they can't quite put their finger on it. That's normal. That's actually the right time to have a conversation.
