Our Journey: From a Personal Question to Conversational Intelligence
CivilTalk began with a question I couldn’t shake.
Long before there was a product or a team, I was having the same conversation in my own family — around the kitchen table, during evening discussions about technology, culture, and life. We all saw the extraordinary benefits of information technology: unprecedented access to knowledge, connection across distance, and new opportunities for work and learning. But we also saw something troubling.
The platforms that connected us were often eroding our sense of patience, civility, and emotional clarity in conversation.
I had spent years in technology — first at Apple, helping bring human-centered computing to life, and then at Cisco, where I saw how networking and protocols could scale connectivity globally. What I learned firsthand was this: technology expands what is possible, but it doesn’t automatically improve how we show up as human beings within those possibilities.
We had dramatically upgraded our communication tools.
We had not equally upgraded the emotional skills required to use them well.
That realization became the foundation of CivilTalk: close the GAP between how fast we communicate and how skillfully we manage emotion within that communication.
Testing the Idea in the Real World
The next chapter focused on higher education — not as an identity, but as a testing ground.
Universities offered an environment where experiential learning met academic reflection. We could observe how real students, faculty, and staff navigated emotionally complex conversations. We pilot-tested structured dialogue programs, refined emotional intelligence learning, and watched patterns emerge in real time.
Through those experiences, I came to an important insight: You cannot change broad cultural behavior all at once.
But you can significantly affect it by strengthening the professionals already charged with guiding people through crucial conversations — counselors, executive coaches, mentors, and leadership advisors. Instead of “boiling the ocean,” we chose to reinforce those who help people navigate emotionally charged interactions.
If you strengthen the professionals helping the people who have asked for help, change compounds naturally.
Not through force.
Not through ideology.
But one structured conversation at a time.
One teacup at a time.
The Turning Point
Across hundreds of observed conversations, a new insight emerged: Every consequential exchange has measurable signals — emotional inflection points, escalation triggers, moments of regulation or dysregulation — but in real time these often go unnoticed, even by experienced practitioners.
Professionals didn’t need slogans. They needed reinforcement.
This became the catalyst for Clarion AI — a precision observational AI system designed to surface conversational patterns without imposing judgment or replacing human expertise.
Clarion doesn’t tell you what to think. It shows you what’s actually unfolding — so you can respond with skill and presence.
Building Infrastructure … the Movement Will Come
Today, CivilTalk is no longer simply an initiative rooted in education.
It is a platform for professional conversational intelligence, built to support those who do the work of helping others think, reflect, and communicate more effectively.
From family conversations… To structured experimentation in educational environments… To professional-grade AI-supported infrastructure … The mission has become clearer with each phase:
Support the professionals doing the work.
Reinforce skill where emotion is high.
Build infrastructure that strengthens human judgment — not substitutes for it.
Throughout my career, whether building human-centered computing at Apple or helping scale networking infrastructure at Cisco, one theme has remained constant: technology should elevate humanity, not diminish it.
CivilTalk exists to ensure that as technology accelerates, our capacity for thoughtful, civil, emotionally grounded conversation accelerates with it.
