Overview
In 2025, I worked as fractional CTO for Berrien Springs Public Schools, consolidating data from every district system into one source of truth. The district has $100M in annual funding; that describes the organization’s scale, not the project budget.
Owning the engagement
I sold and scoped the project, then personally architected and built the system as the sole engineer and C-level strategy consultant. I owned the engagement from defining the work through implementation.
Building the foundation
The result was the backbone of the district’s new data architecture: a unified foundation spanning previously separate district systems.
The work centered on integration and data architecture. It was not an LLM deployment. Its relevance to Forward Deployed Engineering is the delivery model: work directly with an organization, translate its needs into a technical scope, and personally build the system.
Outcome
Data from every district system was consolidated into a single source of truth, establishing the backbone of the district’s new data architecture.