One agency
Keeping the systems running
I began close to the infrastructure, solving the immediate problems that came with rapid growth.
Back to my work
My Journey Chapter One
I still remember my first walk through the doors.
It was the beginning of a twenty-year journey from one crowded server room to an enterprise transformation spanning more than fifty agency brands.
mcgarrybowen, New York
This place was different.
mcgarrybowen was a fast-growing creative agency, and it didn't feel anything like the companies I had worked for before.
Designers covered the walls with work in progress. Music drifted across the open floor. People debated ideas instead of sitting quietly behind cubicles.
Work covering the walls
Music across the floor
Ideas debated out loud
At one point someone rolled past me on a skateboard. I remember smiling and thinking, “This place is different.”
Then the mood changed
Then someone opened the server room door.
The temperature dropped instantly.
One small room was carrying an agency growing at an incredible pace.
I stepped inside and found racks of aging servers, tangled cables, blinking switches, and equipment that had clearly grown one emergency at a time.
The contrast was impossible to miss. Just outside the door was a creative company full of momentum. Inside was the fragile infrastructure supporting all of it.
Aging servers. Tangled cables. Blinking switches. One emergency layered on top of another.
Standing there, I remember thinking
“We're going to outgrow this... fast.”
I had no idea that observation would define the next sixteen years of my career.
The next sixteen years
The business kept growing. My role grew with it.
Over the following years I watched the agency transform into part of one of the world's largest agency networks.
A growing network
Connecting people and departments
Every acquisition introduced another culture, another way of working, and another challenge.
More than fifty brands
Helping entire businesses work together
My responsibility expanded from technology operations to a shared enterprise foundation leadership could trust.
12
Creative agencies
The broader impact
One foundation. Many agencies. One connected enterprise.
My role evolved from supporting individual agencies to helping build the enterprise foundation that connected them all.
What looked like twelve creative agencies on an organizational chart actually represented more than fifty distinct operating businesses, each with its own finance, HR, project management, and operational systems.
Helping bring those businesses together without disrupting how each agency operated became one of the defining challenges of my career.
Looking back, I don't think the greatest accomplishment was integrating software.
What mattered most
It was helping more than fifty agency brands continue being themselves while giving leadership one shared enterprise foundation.
That server room taught me something I have carried into every role since. Technology matters most when it helps people grow without losing what made them successful in the first place.