Brian Herbert
Technology executive. CTO at Clarion Connect. Louisville, Kentucky.
I'm a CTO. I've led technology at a venture-backed manufacturing startup, a global crisis-response nonprofit, and a multi-brand B2B media group. The pattern has been the same each time: a small team with limited resources builds something that changes what the whole company can do. At MakeTime that was machine learning that priced CNC-machined parts straight from CAD files, a big part of why Xometry bought the company. At Ushahidi it was turning text messages from disaster zones into live maps for first responders.
Today I lead technology for Clarion Connect, the division of Clarion Events that includes Quartz Network, Consero, LeftField Media, and other hosted-buyer event businesses, which bring senior buyers and vendors together for one-on-one meetings. That means platforms, data, and security and compliance across a fully remote, international organization that isn't a software company, and building the engineering practice a business like that needs. On the side I run Dot Neutral, a platform that automates the purchase of carbon offsets to mitigate the impact of shipping emissions. I work remotely from Louisville, most days out of Story, a coworking space in Nulu.
Before this
I was Chief Technology Officer at Ushahidi, the nonprofit that builds open-source software for information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping, used around the world in crisis response and advocacy. Before that I was CTO at MakeTime, a manufacturing marketplace. The team built machine learning models that priced CNC-machined parts directly from CAD models, replacing days of manual quoting. Their work was one of the reasons our competitor Xometry acquired MakeTime, and I joined Xometry after the acquisition.
Travel has shaped most of my career. A literature course in England and a service trip to Guatemala during my time at Bellarmine got me hooked. I joined the Peace Corps in Kenya right after graduating, then worked for Esoko in West Africa, and eventually landed at Ushahidi, where I got to work with technologists across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. That experience, building useful things with small teams and limited resources, still informs how I lead.
I hold an MBA from Kennesaw State University and a BS in Computer Information Systems from Bellarmine University. Outside work, I'm Vice President on the Board of Directors of the Louisville Skating Academy, where I also handle much of the club's technical and administrative work, and I previously served on the board of the World Affairs Council of Kentucky and Southern Indiana.
Outside work
Most of what I build these days is an excuse to find out what AI models can actually do. I'll spin up a small game over a few evenings, not to finish it, but to see how far a model can take an idea I've been carrying around. I used the same approach to draft and file an open records request with my local school district, to find out whether AI makes civic engagement easier for an ordinary person.