Two Planets Away

I’m launching Two Planets, an independent strategy and applied AI practice for leaders of mission-driven and public-interest organizations.

I’ve spent much of my career building new capabilities inside established institutions. At Mozilla, the International Rescue Committee, and Consumer Reports, I led teams working at the intersection of technology, innovation, and institutional change. I loved that work: taking ambitious ideas seriously enough to figure out how to make them real.

Now I’m bringing that experience to a broader range of organizations, at a moment when the decisions they face are becoming more consequential.

AI is changing what’s possible for institutions of every size. But for most leaders, the immediate question isn’t which model to use or which vendor to trust. It’s something more fundamental: What should we actually do?

How does AI change how we understand and achieve our mission? What should we build, buy, or avoid? How do we make good decisions without chasing every new development? And how do we build the capabilities to keep learning and adapting?

These are leadership and organizational questions as much as technical ones. Answering them requires an understanding of how institutions work, what kind of change they want to make in the world, how people inside the organization change the way they work, and what it takes to turn a promising idea into something real.

There’s no shortage of AI advice. What’s harder to find is a partner who has led change from the inside, understands the constraints mission-driven organizations face, and can move from strategy to working systems. That’s what I want Two Planets to offer.

The approach is straightforward:

• Listen first. Start with the leader, the mission, the big picture challenges, and the organization’s ambition.
• Make strategy actionable. Good strategy clarifies choices: what to build, what to defer, where to invest, and how to organize for success (especially around building a high-functioning, learning-oriented team).
• Build things that work. Move from promising use cases to practical experiments, working tools, and new capabilities that people can actually use. You don’t need another deck — you need it built!
• Leave institutions stronger. I hope that our work helps organizations strengthen capacity, and leaves them with the tools and momentum to keep climbing.

Alongside client work, I’m also pursuing creative experiments, applied research, and open-source development. These are opportunities to explore new forms of human expression and collaboration with AI, test emerging technologies firsthand, and share what we learn. I’ve always believed that the best way to understand technology is to work with it, question it, and build things that probe its possibilities and limits.

Underneath all of this is a larger conviction. I believe AI can become a powerful extension of human capability, helping people and institutions do things that were previously out of reach. But that future isn’t automatic. The systems we build can just as easily create dependency, concentrate power, or diminish human agency. I think mission-driven organizations are some of the best placed to help ensure we get more of the former and less of the latter.

One lesson has stayed with me throughout my career: ninety percent of strategy is execution, and ninety percent of execution is people. The technology matters, but what we do with it matters much more. And that’s why my motto is: turn up the knob on good ideas.

If you’re leading an organization that’s trying to make sense of AI, build something useful, or navigate a consequential transition, I’d love to hear what you’re working on.