Brian Herbert
Technology executive. CTO at Clarion Connect. Louisville, Kentucky.
I'm a CTO. I've led technology at a venture-backed manufacturing startup, a global crisis-response nonprofit, and a multi-brand B2B media group. The pattern has been the same each time: a small team with limited resources builds something that changes what the whole company can do.
Today I lead technology for Clarion Connect, the division of Clarion Events that includes Quartz Network, Consero, LeftField Media, and other hosted-buyer event businesses, which bring senior executives and vendors together for one-on-one meetings. That means platforms, data, security, and compliance across a fully remote, international organization that isn't a software company, and building the engineering practice a business like that needs. On the side I run Dot Neutral, a platform that automates the purchase of carbon offsets for shipping emissions. I work remotely from Louisville, most days out of Story, a coworking space in Nulu.
Before this
I was Chief Technology Officer at Ushahidi, the nonprofit that builds open-source software for turning text messages from disaster zones into live maps for first responders, used around the world in crisis response and advocacy. After Ushahidi I was CTO at MakeTime, a manufacturing marketplace. We built machine learning that quoted CNC-machined parts straight from CAD files, work that used to take days. The machine learning itself was the work of our data science lead. Xometry was building the same thing, and for a while the two companies were in an arms race over instant pricing. Theirs was ahead. What they wanted from MakeTime was our supplier network, the machine shops that actually made the parts, and when the companies came together I stayed on to bring the two engineering teams into one.
Travel has shaped most of my career. A literature course in England and a service trip to Guatemala during my time at Bellarmine got me hooked. I joined the Peace Corps in Kenya right after graduating, then worked for Esoko, a market-information service for farmers in Ghana, and eventually landed at Ushahidi, where I got to work with technologists across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. That experience, building useful things with small teams and limited resources, still informs how I lead.
I hold an MBA from Kennesaw State University and a BS in Computer Information Systems from Bellarmine University. Outside work, I'm Vice President on the Board of Directors of the Louisville Skating Academy, where I also handle much of the club's technical and administrative work, and I previously served on the board of the World Affairs Council of Kentucky and Southern Indiana.
Outside work
Most of what I build these days is an excuse to find out what AI models can actually do. I'll spin up a small game over a few evenings, not to finish it, but to see how far a model can take an idea I've been carrying around. I used the same approach to draft and file an open records request with my local school district, to find out whether AI makes civic engagement easier for an ordinary person.