Brent Russell

CTO / Engineer / Traveler / Photographer

Brent Russell

Hi! I'm Brent's AI assistant. Ask me anything about his experience, skills, or travels.

About Me

I have spent more than twenty years inside technology companies as a founder, as the first technical hire, and as the CTO brought in to grow what someone else started. The part of the job I care most about is leadership: hiring and building engineering teams, setting the IT strategy, putting the processes and infrastructure in place that lets a startup become a company, and making sure the technology actually serves the business.

That is the work I am doing now as CTO of Mod Advisor, where I rebuilt the IT organization, hired and manage an engineering team in Mumbai, took the company through SOC 2, and brought AI into both the product and the way the team works. It is the same work I did before. At CoinLock I designed the platform, stood up the AWS infrastructure, and opened an engineering office in Mumbai. At Bleam Technology I co-founded a VoIP company that was profitable within six months and acquired by Voip-Pal. At Aragon I built a department from nothing. Before any of that I was the sole IT person at the Science Center of Iowa and a systems administrator running networks across the US and Australia, which is where the hands-on habits come from.

Away from work I have traveled to 92 countries on every continent, lived in Latin America long enough to speak Spanish fluently, and taught myself photography along the way. Check out the Travel map and Photography gallery on this site.

I have two amazing Borzoi dogs that are the best dogs I have ever had, Sushi and Nikita, who can hit 36 mph in the yard and then spend the rest of the day on the couch. You can see their pictures here. I also listen to music from all over the world, with traditional Colombian music at the top of the list, and you can play some of my favorite songs right on this page.

What I Do

Leadership and CTO

I take companies out of the startup phase. The work is the same at every company: learn how the business actually runs, write down the requirements nobody has written down, turn the things that depend on one person into repeatable processes, and fix the IT that was holding everything together with tape. I have done it as a founder and as the CTO brought in to grow what someone else started.

Bleam Technology. Co-founder and CTO of a PSTN-to-VoIP international calling platform. Self-funded, profitable and debt free within six months with no outside investment, 43,000 subscribers, and acquired by Voip-Pal in 2011.

Voz Technologies. Founder. Built a data mining and automated marketing system of 80 websites that generated over $3 million in revenue, migrated it from on-prem Linux to AWS at 99.9% uptime, and automated nearly every operational task so the business could run while I lived and worked abroad.

CoinLock. Founding CTO of a peer-to-peer derivatives and payments platform. Designed the MVP and its APIs, ran 50 AWS instances and 15 databases, wrote the security plan and SOC 2 preparation, and relocated to Mumbai for six months to open an office and hire and train the engineering team.

Mod Advisor. CTO. Rebuilt the IT department from the ground up, hired and manage the engineering team in Mumbai, introduced sprints and Scrum, reorganized AWS into proper sandbox, stage, and production environments, moved everything to Docker with automated deployments, cut server costs, took the company through SOC 2, and brought AI into both the product and the development workflow.

Along the way I have owned budgets, forecasts, IT strategy, vendor and partner relationships, and the business analysis that turns a vague request into a working spec.

Engineering, Infrastructure, and AI

I still write code and I still run servers, because a CTO who cannot do either is guessing. On the software side I work in PHP and Laravel, Python, JavaScript and Next.js, and SQL on MySQL, Aurora, and Postgres, with a long tail of older tools from TCL on Cisco gear to VB.NET and ColdFusion. I build systems as microservices running in Docker, with CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions that test and deploy every change. On the infrastructure side I have managed Linux systems since 2004: DNS and DHCP, reverse proxies, firewalls and VLANs, bare metal and cloud on AWS and Azure, and the physical migrations that come with moving a company.

AI is now part of all of it. I run local language models on my own GPU server and use them as working tools: they power features inside the products I build, including Zepey and Perfect Home Strategies, they answer voice commands in my home, and they run the assistant on this page. I also train custom models and build agentic workflows against my own code and data. The point is never the novelty. It is shipping faster with a smaller team and keeping the data in the house.

Photography

Photography is how I remember travel. Over the past 15 years I have photographed landscapes and everyday culture in 92 countries, from the Arctic in winter to tracking silverback gorillas for multiple days in the Ugandan mountains. Most of it was shot on the road with a Canon R5, a Canon 5D, and the occasional drone. Landscapes and night photography are what I come back to, but I have also shot fashion-style portraits and a few weddings. You can see the travel work in the photography gallery on this site.

In 2022 I started a photography company, picturing.us, and found that the marketing and editing side was not fulfilling, so it remains a side venture.

Resume

22 Years of Experience

Technical Leadership IT Strategy Global Cross-Functional Team Leadership Strategic Planning and Budgeting Cost Reduction Planning SOC 2 Compliance Information Security and Risk Management Amazon Web Services (AWS) Information Technology Infrastructure Software Solution Architecture Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLM) Model Context Protocol (MCP) Scrum Master Product Strategy Project Management Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Docker Linux System Administration Network Administration API Development JavaScript Python Node.js PHP Laravel Redis MySQL PostgreSQL Nginx English Spanish Italian Certified ScrumMaster

Experience

Dec 2025 - Present

Mod Advisor Des Moines, Iowa

Chief Technology Officer

Rebuilt the IT organization from the ground up: traveled to Mumbai, opened a local office, interviewed and hired a new engineering team, and manage its day-to-day operations including device logistics, holidays, and pay coordination.
Introduced Scrum and sprints making IT operations predictable and moved the company beyond the startup phase.
Led the team into building with AI and integrated AI features into the product on AWS; conceived Email-to-Report, the foundation for an AI virtual assistant for workers' compensation.
Scheduled and managed a third-party penetration test, own SOC 2 compliance, and migrated the company to a new compliance automation platform.
Reorganized AWS infrastructure (security groups, Amplify, EC2, multiple RDS instances) into separate sandbox, staging, and production environments; reduced server costs and moved all systems to Docker with GitHub Actions deployment pipelines.

Dec 2024 - Dec 2025

Mod Advisor Des Moines, Iowa

Senior Systems Engineer

Full-stack development on the Mod Advisor platform with Laravel and PHP, including API development and system architecture that laid the groundwork for the later infrastructure reorganization.
Designed and set up the local office network: switch, Wi-Fi, and VLAN segmentation.

Nov 2021 - Mar 2023

Aragon Remote

Head of Decentralized Technology

Codeveloped Maintenance as a Service providing quality assurance, bug fixes, and software updates to Aragon’s current code set
Led 3rd party product integration efforts: Otoco, Raincards, EVMCrispr, Karma, and Parallel Markets.
Spearheaded multilingual documentation translation efforts.
Codeveloped the Aragon DAO Experts Program, a structure for collaboration of service providers.

Jun 2018 - Feb 2022

CoinLock Mumbai, India Miami, FL

Chief Technology Officer

Relocated to Mumbai for six months to open a local office, recruit and train the IT team, and build effective collaboration across international teams.
Built CoinLock's security program from the ground up: segmented the network behind firewalls, placed all staff and service access behind VPN, enforced TLS end to end, fronted the application tier with hardened reverse proxies, and led the policies, controls, and evidence work that prepared the company for SOC 2 certification.
Personally built the MVP for CoinLock's peer-to-peer derivatives and payments platforms, including its APIs, then grew the engineering team around it.
Owned cloud operations across 50 AWS instances and 15 RDS databases, including networking and cost management, with Azure as a secondary provider.

Jun 2008 - Feb 2024

Voz Technologies Remote

Founder

Developed a data mining and marketing system with PHP, Python, JavaScript, and MySQL consisting of 80 websites which generated over $3M.
Consumed multiple APIs parsing json and thousands of RSS data feeds.
99.9% uptime by migrating on-prem Linux servers to EC2 and RDS instances on AWS.
Automated tasks with python, cron, bash/shell scripts, and php.
Improved system performance by implementing reverse proxy server and Redis caching which reduced server load by 80%.

Nov 2009 - Dec 2011

Bleam Technology Las Vegas, Nevada

Co-Founder and CTO

Built the CallArc prototype myself with no outside funding. It was a PSTN to VoIP platform that let any phone, even a rotary phone, call internationally for free. Stack: PHP, AGI Perl, Asterisk, MySQL.
Reached profitability within six months with no debt or outside investment, and grew to 43,000 subscribers.
Designed a voice keyword ad matching system that paid for free calls through targeted advertising and affiliate offers.
Led engineering for the six-person company, managing two developers, through its acquisition by Voip-Pal (VPLM) in 2011.

Jan 2007 - Feb 2008

TollFreeForwarding Los Angeles, CA

Systems Architect

Worked side by side with the CEO at a company with no CTO.
Acquired proficiency in TCL scripting and rebuilt the entire back end from scratch, including all of the Microsoft SQL stored procedures and the call routing software on Cisco AS5400 servers.
Recommended and implemented new features for the virtual PBX system at the core of the product, including call recording and call transfer.
Built monitoring software to track live calls and an audio conversion tool using SoX.
Managed all of the infrastructure, including Cisco switches, Windows servers, Microsoft SQL Server, IIS web servers, and Linux machines.

Mar 2005 - Mar 2007

Mobile Messenger Los Angeles, CA Sydney, Australia

Systems Administrator / Software Developer

Set up the company's Los Angeles office and stood up its IT operations, and also worked out of the Sydney, Australia office.
Oversaw the administration of an internal network, domain controllers, and Active Directory that extended across both the US and Australia.
Led the development team creating the front end and back end of over 500 php, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript landing pages.

Feb 2004 - Mar 2005

Science Center of Iowa Des Moines, Iowa

Network Administrator / Software Developer

Configured and managed Windows domain controllers, Active Directory, Exchange, file sharing, web servers, and VPN.
Managed LAN/WAN traffic, implementing QoS for VoIP and configuring Cisco switches.
Improved network security by implementing VLANs, a firewall, and segregated network traffic.
Migrated 150 workstations, servers, and switches to a new location within 48 hours.