Thadd Lapsley
Technology strategy & leadership
Executive strategy, budgets, vendors, teams, and the roadmaps that turn priorities into plans.
About
Building technology organizations that outlast the roadmap.
I'm a technology executive with more than 25 years spent where strategy meets delivery — building infrastructure, cybersecurity programs, and technology organizations for mission-driven and growth-stage companies, with AI strategy and adoption as the newest chapter of that work.
The technology changes every few years. What doesn't change is building an organization that can carry it.
The through-line
Twenty-five years, one question.
I started on the technical side of IT — the migration, the compliance review, the integration that touched every system. It didn't take long to learn that the hardest technology problems are rarely technical. They're about people, priorities, process, risk, money, and communication.
Since then I've led through very different environments: enterprise hypergrowth at a national mortgage lender, a ransomware recovery under real financial pressure, a fast-growing services business automating its way past its own manual processes, a combined church and K-12 campus modernizing years of technical debt, consulting and fractional CIO work across several industries, and now enterprise technology for a global nonprofit ministry — including the arrival of generative AI as a serious organizational capability.
The common thread isn't any one technology. It's figuring out what an organization actually needs next, creating enough clarity that leaders can make a real decision, and then building — or leading the team that builds — the thing that gets them there.
Selected leadership
- 01
Director of Technology
Come and See Foundation
Enterprise technology leadership for the global nonprofit ministry behind The Chosen — infrastructure, cybersecurity, SaaS and vendor strategy, and AI strategy and governance.
- 02
Director of Information Technology
Eagle's Landing FBC and Christian Academy
Built a five year technology roadmap for a combined church and school campus. Migrated 300 plus devices and 12 servers to cloud infrastructure and stood up a full cybersecurity program.
- 03
Technology Consultant and Fractional CIO
Alexander Produce · Patriot Fire Protection · Hospitality Financial Group
Led full recovery from a ransomware attack on a $50M business, restoring 100 percent of data within 10 days. Automated more than 120 hours of manual work each week through systems integration.
- 04
Director of Infrastructure Services
Veterans United Home Loans
Built and led the infrastructure services division through growth from 60 to more than 2,500 employees, managing an $8M budget while virtualizing 1,200 servers and connecting 48 offices nationwide.
Where I spend my attention
Infrastructure & cybersecurity
Cloud, identity, resilience, and the operational discipline that keeps a mission running.
AI adoption & enablement
Strategy, governance, and training that let an organization use AI without gambling its credibility.
How I lead
Leadership philosophy
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Technology exists to help an organization accomplish what it was created to do — not the other way around. I've never found a business or ministry problem that technology alone could solve.
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Successful change comes down to trust, relationships, and understanding how people actually work — not the platform you chose. I've never led a hard transition without spending as much time on people as on systems.
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Part of a senior technology leader's job is translating technical complexity into decisions a leadership team can actually make: what problem are we solving, why does it matter, what does it cost, what's the risk, and what happens next.
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A good leader builds people and systems that keep working without requiring the leader to personally solve everything. I measure success partly by what still runs well after I've moved on to the next problem.
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My faith shapes how I think about leadership. I see leadership as stewardship — of people, resources, opportunity, and trust. It's part of why I've increasingly chosen work where the mission matters as much as the technology.
Outside of work
A short personal note
I live in Colorado Springs with my family, where the mountains are a short drive and a good reminder that not everything needs to be optimized. I enjoy mentoring other technology leaders, building small software and AI projects mostly for the fun of learning how they work, and staying curious about where technology is headed next. Faith and family shape most of what matters to me outside the office — and a good deal of how I lead inside it, too.
Working on something that needs a steady hand?
I take on a small number of advisory engagements each year — technology strategy, AI governance, and executive coaching.