Hi, I'm Colton.
I help ambitious, impact-focused leaders put agentic AI to work for the impact they want to make. I'll hold your hand as you figure it out -- and realize it's way easier than you thought.
I help ambitious, impact-focused leaders put agentic AI to work for the impact they want to make. I'll hold your hand as you figure it out -- and realize it's way easier than you thought.
Most of the leaders I sit down with already know AI is a big deal. They've used Claude or ChatGPT. They're a little overwhelmed by the pace, a little unsure where they fit. They want a knowledgeable thought partner who's actually built with these tools, not another deck.
So we sit down with whatever's actually on your plate. We build something useful in the session itself. By the end you have a personal AI Command Center that knows you, a clearer picture of what your work could look like, and a thought partner you can keep coming back to as the work grows.
The practice is Activation Playbook. It runs in three shapes -- Activation Sessions, 1:1 Executive AI Coaching, and Applied AI in Residence -- but it's the same mode of working: hands-on, in the room with you, building things you can actually use.
There are parts of your job that drain you. Email triage. Status updates. Reformatting the same memo for the fifth audience. The work that fills your calendar but isn't really yours.
Then there's the work only you can do. The conversation with the program officer. The strategy that needed your specific shape of attention. The thing you went into this field for in the first place.
A year ago I started building an AI-native startup. I'm not an engineer. I started talking to Claude Code, and within weeks I was shipping things to the App Store I didn't think were possible for one person. What hit me hardest wasn't that I'd built a product. It was that I'd been operating at maybe 10% of what I could actually do my whole life.
I started Activation Playbook because I want other ambitious people to feel that. Not in a hustle-culture way. In a whoa, I can think bigger about what I'm actually here to do way. The world needs the impact you've been holding back on, and the tools to make it real are sitting right here.
I'm hopeful about what AI can offload. I'm also honest that the offloading can go wrong... that you can give the wrong things away, hide behind the tool, stop being in the room. Both are true. The point of the work is to get more of you into the parts that need you, and less of you trapped in the parts that don't.
I just finished my MBA at Berkeley Haas and am now finishing my MPH at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. I was in the inaugural cohort of Berkeley's AI for Business certificate, one of the first AI-focused MBA programs in the country.
I have experience staying at the frontier of AI and building with the latest tools. As a founder myself, I have a deep respect for what it takes to lead an organization in a rapidly changing world. I was a graduate student instructor for Berkeley's Lean LaunchPad, and I love helping founders on their entrepreneurial journey.
More about my background on LinkedIn.
If something here landed, the easiest next step is a short conversation. No pitch, no pressure -- just a feel for whether the work fits.