I'm Johnny. I build things that make systems honest.
Right now I'm an Engagement Manager at McKinsey, where I lead teams across GenAI implementation, production optimization, and operating model redesign. Before that, four years inside Massachusetts state government. Two degrees earned while working full-time.
But the resume version of me isn't the interesting part.
I'm obsessed with systems that pretend to be something they're not. Institutions that obscure how they actually work. Software that hides its own logic. Organizations that bury decisions behind layers of process until no one can trace who decided what, or why.
I kept finding this pattern everywhere — in government, in consulting, in the AI tools I use every day. The response is always the same: make it legible. Build the thing that forces transparency.
That instinct is the throughline across everything I've done. At the Department of Revenue, I built data infrastructure and dashboards that made $30B in tax operations visible to the people running them. At McKinsey, I built a GenAI platform that turned billions of dollars of dead consulting deliverables into a living, queryable knowledge system. On my own time, I built Project Ontos because AI tools don't share context — every session starts from zero, and no one can see why the system made the choices it did.
I run five to seven AI terminals simultaneously. I ship fast, break things intentionally, and believe the best way to test an idea is to build it. My development philosophy is simple: YAGNI, KISS, single-feature tools that solve one problem well.
I'm a consultant by training, which means I can walk into any industry — steel manufacturing, oil and gas, federal government, medtech, retail — and get to the core of the problem quickly. But I'm a builder by default, which means I'd rather ship a working solution than present a recommendation.
I'm most energized when I'm marrying theory with real-world problems to create something that works. Pressure-testing ideas with smart people. Converting research into products, working solutions.
My wife and I chose San Francisco. We'd both been looking to be in the tech ecosystem — in the room where it happens. My wife, Michelle, is an agent strategist at Sierra AI, while I continue to serve McKinsey & Company and focus on its technology practice. It was a balance of adventure and continuity.
I'm interested in the intersection of AI and institutional transparency — systems that don't just automate processes, but redesign them to be legible, accountable, and honest. I want to build products at that intersection, ideally at a stage where I can own the whole problem end-to-end.
I'm Korean-American and bilingual. I've spent my whole life at the intersection of different cultures, ideas, and ways of thinking — and I've come to realize that's exactly what excites me. The spaces where things are moving, colliding, and changing are the ones that feel like home.
