I am a personal leadership speaker, author, and AI advisor who draws on five decades of lived experience to help people find the courage, clarity, and conviction to flourish in the age of AI — and all that follows.
That is the short version. The full story is below.
I was nineteen years old, sitting on a city bus in Dayton, Ohio, wondering whether I had what it takes. And then I looked up. Above the window, someone had placed a small decal — printed with words written in 1899 by Theodore Roosevelt:
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much — because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
— Theodore Roosevelt, 1899Those words did not feel like historical rhetoric. They felt like a summons. They have been organizing my life ever since — across four simultaneous arenas that have never stopped running in parallel.
Here is what that summons has looked like in practice.
These are not phases. They are four simultaneous tracks — each running concurrently across five decades, each informing and sharpening the others.
Ten years in U.S. Army Reserve Component Special Forces — maintaining the same operational readiness as regular Army, prepared to deploy from civilian life on short notice. Motto: De Oppresso Liber — to free the oppressed. The discipline and commitment to something larger than self followed Wayne into every arena that came after.
Founder, co-founder, or startup team member of more than two dozen ventures across technology, finance, energy, and nonprofit sectors. Businesses built, lost, and rebuilt. Two years in Moscow promoting digital literacy alongside the Gorbachev Foundation — in the language of the country he had trained to fight against during the Cold War. That builder's arc now runs directly into AI advisory work.
When the Afghan evacuation crisis erupted in 2021, Wayne stepped in as a leader at WelcomeNST — helping resettle hundreds of refugee families. When war came to Ukraine in 2022, he drove into Kyiv and spent months delivering humanitarian aid to bombed-out communities. Service has also meant decades of lay ministry — teaching and leading as a committed follower of Jesus Christ — in the quiet, unglamorous work of showing up for people who need someone to show up.
Pioneering has never been a phase — it has been the disposition running beneath every arena simultaneously. A second governing summons has always run alongside Roosevelt's:
"Go where there is no path and leave a trail."
Wayne began studying artificial intelligence formally at MIT Sloan in 2018 — years before the current wave of public attention. Returning from Ukraine, he stepped from one of the world's most urgent human crises into the most consequential technological transformation of our time — not as a newcomer, but as someone who had been watching its approach for years. He now speaks, writes, and advises at the intersection of personal leadership, AI, and strategy.
Roosevelt delivered those words in 1899 before Chicago's most accomplished professionals. He was not warning the struggling. He was warning the successful — that achievement is no protection from the gray twilight. The temptation to coast, to settle, to stop daring — it grows stronger, not weaker, as life becomes more comfortable.
Roosevelt refused the gray twilight every time. Through the Dakota Badlands, through the presidency, through Africa and South America, through every arena life offered — he kept daring mighty things. And he was asking his audience to do the same.
He refused the gray twilight every time. And he was asking his audience to refuse it too.
That is what I am asking of your audience — refuse the gray twilight and Dare Mighty Things.
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