Twenty-five years of accountability.
A research program built on it.

Founder and Director, DG Humana Institute.

I founded the DG Humana Institute, a Dallas-based 501(c)(3) scientific and educational nonprofit, as a home for like-minded scholars working on human dignity, agency, and the future of work under automation. The institute publishes and convenes interdisciplinary scholarship and develops educational resources on these questions.

I set its research and educational agenda (algorithmic decision-making, workplace dignity, and the conditions for human agency in automated systems), author its essays and conceptual frameworks, manage its publishing presence, and am responsible for its federal tax-exempt status, Texas nonprofit registration, filings, and financial oversight.

Turning expert judgment into auditable decision systems.

In real estate underwriting and corporate finance, I elicit tacit heuristics from analysts, underwriters, and tax accountants; interpret regulatory frameworks, tax codes, accounting standards, and underwriting manuals; and design the ontologies and rule-based architectures that encode them, with explicit handling of incomplete data.

The work extends through implementation and oversight: rules engines and decision trees, including neuro-symbolic tooling; validation against historical datasets; feedback loops that keep the rule base current; trace-and-explanation facilities that show users, auditors, and regulators which rules produced a determination; and review of automated lending and credit rules for systematic bias and non-compliance.

A recent extension of this practice is Algo BirdDog Analytics (founded 2026), a residential real estate analytics practice for North Texas investors. I built it by formalizing proprietary screening and valuation algorithms, developed over a decade of investor advisory, into an automated pipeline that now runs without manual intervention. The automation holds operator time to a minimum by design, so that research remains my principal commitment. It also serves as a working case for the research: I am the accountable principal for a production automated decision system whose outputs clients act on with capital.

Accountable for consequential decisions under statute.

Licensed by the Texas Real Estate Commission as a sales agent in 2008 and as a broker in 2012, I have worked across commercial and residential property, multifamily housing, land, and farm and ranch transactions, participated in mixed-use development projects, and coordinated with local, county, and state authorities. Leading a brokerage and the work of more than fifty agents required financial accountability, due diligence, negotiation, and coordination among people with different expertise.

As the first eXp Realty designated broker in Texas (2013–2014), I held statutory supervisory accountability under TRELA and TREC rules for contract review, agent competency, advertising and disclosure compliance, intermediary status, and trust-account and record-retention requirements.

As broker manager at Plaza Real (2014–2016), I directed market intelligence for industrial and office assets across Texas and Denver, modeled vacancy, absorption, rents, and deliveries, authored quarterly market reports, and provided expert commentary to publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Houston Chronicle, and BisNow. Since 2015, through Kerry Thornhill & Associates, I have acted for owners facing foreclosure under the Texas Property Code, operating under anti-exploitation safeguards for a structurally disadvantaged counterparty, including mandatory TREC disclosures and the federal MARS rule, with full transaction records retained for state inspection.

Personal accountability under strict liability.

As owner and operations director of Ave Maria Transport, an asset-based motor carrier hauling both hazardous materials and human food, I managed transportation operations across forty-eight states and answered at once to FMCSA, PHMSA, and FDA, coordinating with local, county, state, and federal authorities. I held personal accountability for PHMSA registration, hazmat employee training, placarding and routing, the DOT security plan, and cross-contamination controls between incompatible loads.

I maintained the audit record on which the carrier’s standing depended: driver qualification files, Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse compliance, hours-of-service monitoring, inspections, and financial-responsibility filings. The company was wound down in 2024 as the sector consolidated.

Chief Executive Officer, The Colgin Companies.

As CEO (2004–2008) of this Dallas manufacturer of liquid smoke, marinades, Worcestershire sauces, and an over-the-counter topical, I directed operations subject simultaneously to FDA food-processing and FDA OTC drug regimes, and led private-label and co-packaging negotiations, supply-chain sourcing, capital allocation for the plant, and product and brand renewal.

Earlier, as national sales manager (2001–2003), I took an established flat-growth brand to 30% sales growth in two years, oversaw 32 regional food brokers with direct responsibility for national retail accounts, secured the company’s first direct Walmart placement, and introduced its first syndicated scanner-data research to bring quantitative evidence into placement and trade-spend decisions.