By day I lead enterprise and mortgage technology for a 1,400-employee independent mortgage bank. Nights and weekends, I build the things I wished existed — and rebuild engines that were headed for the scrapyard.
"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Day job
Enterprise technology strategy, multi-channel mortgage technology, M&A integration, and automation for a top-30 U.S. lender.
I lead enterprise technology across mortgage technology, enterprise applications, enterprise architecture, and IT operations — a 20-person onshore, nearshore, and offshore organization supporting more than 1,400 employees across every U.S. time zone.
The scope covers wholesale, direct-to-consumer, and retail channels behind a $6.3B origination business, and I partner with the CEO and executive leadership on strategy, operating plans, M&A integration, and cost transformation. I built the company's enterprise architecture function from scratch, promoted its first team leads, and hired its first enterprise architect.
That Eisenhower line is the whole job. The plan on paper never survives contact with a changing origination cycle — but the act of planning is what makes it possible to pivot without panicking. Strategy earns you the right to change your mind on purpose.
I learned that one the hard way, off the clock. In 2022, riding to meet the head of IT at a company we were acquiring, a motorcycle accident cost me my left leg below the knee — and I went back to doing this job.
Track record
Directed the technology integration of a 400-person, $2B originator into a $4B platform — systems, process, vendors, and the comms to a combined 1,400-person org.
Cut cost per loan by 10% and support demand by 30% per employee, while SLA performance improved under the company's first formal SLA framework.
Consolidated VOIP, EDR, SASE, ITAM, ITSM, documentation, and BC/DR vendors for 30% savings with no loss of service quality.
Built the enterprise architecture function so the platform scales with origination volume instead of against it.
Stoner Capital LLC
My Texas holding company. Everything under it started the same way — a problem I ran into myself, then built the thing I wished existed.
I buy old devices, sanitize the data, refurbish what can be saved, and resell or properly recycle the rest. The point is making sure electronics actually get recycled instead of quietly ending up in a dump.
I employ family and friends with the intention that they make the money and I just host the process.
A site and app built to educate people about spirits and get more of them into it — including working out your own palate and getting sommelier-level recommendations based on what you actually like, not what's trending.
It gets tested in person. Poker night doubles as a guided tasting — a flight poured for the table, notes up on the wall, and a dozen honest opinions about whether the bottle earns its price. That feedback is the product.
I host a monthly poker night that averages more than twelve players a session. Nothing on the market ran it the way I wanted, so I built the timer myself — blinds, levels, entries, chip counts, prize pool, and the break countdown, with a player view everyone pulls up on their phone.
Then I built the room around it: a Mac Mini driving a four-pane video wall through an OREI controller, wired into an in-wall enclosure so the tournament display, the game, and the music all share the screen without anybody touching a remote.
The through-line
A poker night that needed a better clock. A spirits hobby that needed a better guide. A pile of old electronics that needed somewhere better to go. A junkyard 6.0 that deserved to run again. Plan it out, write down the steps, and be ready to change the plan when reality shows up.
