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Thomas Burgett

Technology Leadership Visionary

Thomas Burgett is an IT leader with expertise in enterprise technology, infrastructure, cybersecurity and business intelligence. He focuses on aligning technology strategy with business objectives while building secure, scalable systems that support operational performance.

Encouraging Innovation through Exploration

The freedom to explore solutions, both good and bad, has defined my career more than anything else. Being given the opportunity to build solutions and interpret data has driven innovation not only in me, but also in the teams I've led.

It's easy to fall back on tried-and-true methods, but real success and high achievement have more often than not come from the freedom to try new methodologies without the fear of punishment for mistakes.

Balancing Innovation with Stability

Everything starts with a stable foundation. The key for me has been ensuring that the foundation is rock solid. It's the heart of what DevOps is about, enabling us to build, try and fail without bringing the whole operation to its knees.

If something doesn't work, we can set it aside and build anew on that same foundation until we find something that works.

  ​The leaders who earn a real seat at the table are the ones who can walk into any room, whether technical or executive, and speak credibly about what the business actually needs.  

The hard part has been balancing the need for change and innovation against the cost of allowing work that businesses might see as unproductive. It's our job as technology leaders to show how the experience and learning gained during that "unproductive" time become the foundation for future innovation.

Building Technology with the Business

In my experience, maintaining close relationships with other leaders is the only way to ensure what we're doing actually drives value for the business. That extends to my teams as well. They can't understand their colleagues' pain points or priorities unless they spend time alongside them in their day-to-day operations.

I've made it a point throughout my career to embed my teams with their business partners—not just in meetings, but in the actual flow of work. When a developer or analyst understands the pressure an operations manager is under at month-end, or what a sales leader is trying to communicate to their team, the solutions they build naturally reflect those realities.

Technology stops being something that's handed over and instead becomes something that's built together. By working hand in hand with our business partners, we find the ideal balance between what the business wants and needs and the tools available to support those goals.

Building Trust in AI

My teams have been at the forefront of the AI revolution, and the biggest challenge hasn't been pushing people toward data-driven decision-making. It's been preventing the cognitive surrender that can come with over-reliance on AI tools.

There's a real risk that people stop questioning the answers they're getting. They see a confident, well-formatted response from AI and accept it at face value without asking where the data came from or whether it's telling the whole story. That's a dangerous place for a business to be.

Business intelligence teams may not be delivering dashboards the way they once did, but their data engineering skills have become even more critical. As we guide people toward using internal AI tools connected to our data warehouse, we're ensuring the data AI accesses are clean, vetted and ready for business users. The goal isn't to slow down AI adoption; it's to make sure the foundation underneath it is one we actually trust.

Growing into Leadership

Get out from behind your screen. The technical skills that got you where you are will only take you so far. The rest comes down to relationships.

You can't lead at the intersection of technology and business without deeply understanding both sides, and that understanding only comes from spending time with the people doing the work. Sit with your business partners. Learn what keeps them up at night. Let that inform everything you build. Beyond that, make peace with failure early.

The professionals I've seen stall are almost always the ones who become too cautious, who stop experimenting because the risk of being wrong feels too great. The ones who thrive create environments where trying something new and falling short is treated as a learning opportunity, not a character flaw. That mindset has to start with you before it can spread throughout your team.

Finally, never stop being a student of the business. Technology is the tool, not the goal. The leaders who earn a real seat at the table are the ones who can walk into any room, whether technical or executive, and speak credibly about what the business actually needs. That only happens if you stay curious, stay humble and keep asking questions long after you feel like you should already have all the answers.