Executive Technology Advisor

Technology decisions.
Business consequences.

Independent judgment for leaders facing a decision that is expensive to reverse.

I advise CEOs and founders, executive leadership teams, corporate boards, and private equity operating partners: the people who carry the consequences of a technology decision long after the technology has been chosen.

Start the Conversation Directly with me. No intake, no screener.
What Brings People Here

The decisions I'm brought in for.

Most people arrive with the decision already on the table, and a quiet sense that the usual answers won't hold up. These are the ones that come up most.

01
"The board is asking what we're doing about AI. We don't have an answer we believe."
The pressure is real. The honest answer is rarely a tool: it's a decision about where judgment can be handed to a machine and where it cannot. I help you build a position you can defend in the boardroom and a plan you would fund with your own money.
02
"Technology has quietly become the constraint on growth."
The systems that got you here are the reason things now take a quarter instead of a week. Usually only one or two constraints actually bind. The work is finding which ones, and fixing those, rather than everything.
03
"We're about to commit serious capital to a platform decision."
Buy, build, replace, or leave it alone. The wrong call is expensive for years and rarely reversible. I give you an independent read before the money moves, and I have no stake in which way it goes.
04
"We're diligencing an asset and need an honest read on the technology."
What the technology can carry, what it will cost to remediate, and what the seller isn't saying. Delivered in the language of the investment committee, on the timeline the deal actually allows.
05
"We have a technology leadership problem we haven't named yet."
Sometimes the organization is right and the leader is wrong. Sometimes it's the reverse. Sometimes the role you're recruiting for shouldn't exist. I help you see it clearly before you make a hire you'll have to unwind.

If your decision isn't on this list, it is still worth a conversation. Start the conversation →

What I don't do

  • I don't sell technology. I have no product, no partnership, and no referral fee riding on your decision.
  • I don't staff projects or resell engineers, so I have no interest in the engagement being larger than it needs to be.
  • I don't deliver a deck and leave. A recommendation you can't execute is not a recommendation.
  • I don't take engagements I don't believe will pay for themselves. If that's the honest read, I'll tell you before we start.
Why My Judgment

Earned where the stakes were real.

Nearly 30 years in enterprise technology, most of it accountable for outcomes, not advising on them.

At Travelers, a Fortune 100 insurer, I led modernization across the underwriting and policy platforms the business actually runs on. Not a pilot. The systems that write the premium. I built and led an organization of more than 80 engineers, architects, and data professionals, and I lived with the consequences of every call I made.

I now sit on the other side of the table, advising growth-stage companies, mid-market operators, and private-equity-backed businesses facing versions of the same decisions with far less room for error.

"In the operational work I've led, disciplined AI and automation adoption has produced efficiency gains in the range of 20–30%, but only where the process was fixed first. Where it wasn't, the technology faithfully amplified the mess."

That is the whole lesson, and it is why I lead with the operating model rather than the tool.

The Full Background
Christopher R. Marrs
Christopher R. Marrs Executive Technology Advisor
A Decision Story

When the right call was to stop treating
a delivery crisis as an architecture crisis

The Decision

A Fortune 100 insurance company brought me in to assess a strategic modernization initiative that had already been in development for more than four years. The goal was to modernize portions of a 20-year-old core insurance platform using a cloud-native architecture, but delivery had slipped by more than sixteen months and confidence across the business had eroded.

The question wasn't whether the team should work harder.

It was whether we were solving the right problem.

The Diagnosis

The technology was not the only issue.

Scope had expanded well beyond what the architecture could realistically support. Teams were operating in silos. Governance had added process without improving decision-making. Business and technology no longer shared the same definition of success, and trust between stakeholders had broken down.

This was no longer only an architecture problem.

It had become a leadership and decision-making problem.

The Recommendation

My recommendation was not to accelerate delivery.

It was to change how the organization approached the work.

We simplified the architectural direction, clarified decision ownership, restored cross-functional alignment, and established a cadence that made progress visible to both business and technology leadership.

Following the assessment, the company asked me to join full-time to lead the transformation.

The Outcome

Within twelve months, the first production insurance product was delivered on the new platform. A second major product followed about six months later. The platform went on to support a multi-billion-dollar book of business, and the organization grew from a single architect to more than eighty professionals.

The most important outcome was not the platform itself.

It was restoring confidence that the organization could make good decisions together again.

Executive Lesson

Modernization rarely fails because the technology is too difficult.

It struggles when leadership, governance, and decision-making are treated as technology problems instead of business problems.

Fix the decision system first, and technology becomes an accelerator instead of an obstacle.

The Easiest Way to Start

How this begins.

No intake team. No junior screener. No discovery deck. You will be talking to me, and you'll leave with something useful whether or not we ever work together.

01

The Conversation

A direct conversation about the decision in front of you, in plain terms. No preparation required on your side.

02

An Honest Read

What I actually think, including when the right answer is to do nothing, or to hire someone other than me.

03

A Defined Scope

Only if there's a reason to continue. Scope, timeline, and cost agreed before any work begins.

Common Questions

Before we talk.

I help leadership teams make technology decisions that carry material business consequences: whether to build or buy, whether a platform investment is sound, whether an AI initiative is real, whether the technology organization is led correctly. The work is judgment, not implementation. I do not sell technology, staff projects, or resell engineers.
A consulting firm has an interest in the size and duration of the engagement that follows the recommendation. I don't staff projects, so I have no stake in which way a decision goes. You are engaging one senior person who has been accountable for these decisions, not a team assembling a recommendation on your behalf.
Yes. I give operating partners and deal teams an independent read on a target's technology: what it can carry, what it will cost to remediate, and what is not being said. Findings are delivered in investment-committee language and on the timeline the deal actually allows, not the timeline a consulting engagement would prefer.
Nearly 30 years in enterprise technology, most of it accountable for outcomes rather than advising on them. At Travelers, a Fortune 100 insurer, I led modernization across the underwriting and policy platforms the business runs on, and built and led an organization of more than 80 engineers, architects, and data professionals. I now advise growth-stage companies, mid-market operators, and private-equity-backed businesses.
With a conversation, directly with me. There is no intake team, no junior screener, and no discovery deck. Where the decision warrants formal work, it usually begins with an Executive Technology Decision Review. Where it doesn't, I will say so, and where I can, point you to someone better suited.
The First Engagement

Executive Technology
Decision Review

Where a decision warrants formal work, this is how we begin. It is a review of the decision itself: not an audit of your technology, and not a proposal for a larger program.

You already know the decision.

The question is whether you are confident in the answer. One conversation is usually enough to find out.

Start the Conversation