Craig Brace
Business Operations Leader Technology and AI as an Operating Lever
I connect product and operational decisions to business outcomes, and I am the person leaders trust to translate between the technical team and the business.
A business strategist and operator who's fluent in technology.
For more than a decade I've owned technology as a business function. I co-founded TechNeed, a digital transformation and AI agency, and ran it for eight years; at Smart Measures I helped commercialize a primary care measure now adopted across the country. We built TechNeed from nothing with just three partners: my co-founders brought the technical depth, while I ran operations and business development and shaped client strategy alongside them.
I saw machine learning built into a product back in 2013, and I have helped companies adopt new technology ever since. AI is the latest, and like every tool before it, it has to earn its place.
How I create value
Three levers I pull.
Most solutions get picked before the problem is understood. I do the research to find the real constraint, then show people the paths they did not know they had. That has ranged from installing the discipline to track profitability client by client, which showed us which work to keep and which to walk away from, to using early GPT to bring a healthcare venture into HIPAA compliance on a budget.
The key is simple and most people skip it: I listen, and I ask questions until I understand what the client actually needs. That is how I manage stakeholder expectations and keep the technical team and the client speaking the same language.
I start by understanding how the work actually happens, then name the outcome and map the route to it. Choose solutions that fit, implement with a plan, measure the result, and keep a feedback loop where it earns one. Decisions are data-driven, not emotional, though the right call sometimes weighs outside factors or a risk worth taking. I also think about who a decision touches, because building software taught me the build is only half the battle.
Selected outcomes
What the work produced.
Outside investment. Built from scratch on sweat equity into a multi-million-dollar firm on a global delivery model.
Proposal and agreement turnaround, down from weeks. The speed won work and saved tens of thousands a year.
Clinicians adopted a CMS-approved primary care measure, reaching over a million patients. I lead the commercial side.
Five-star reviews across six- and seven-figure engagements, where I was the translator between business and technical teams.
Hands-on
I built the system that runs our operations.
Rolling up my sleeves means the real work: due diligence and research, digging into a spreadsheet or a contract detail to resolve an open question. For most of my career I could explain an idea but not build it. Recent AI tools changed that, so I used the right one for each job, Lovable, Claude, and GPT, to build a centralized company brain trained on our methods and voice. Everything below runs on it: two platforms that carry how we get found and how we deliver, and the prototypes I use to make an idea real before anyone builds it.
Platforms
Marketing platform
Company awareness that actually sounds like us. On our site, an AI interface, not a chatbot, answers how we would approach a visitor’s problem: a response drawn from our own methods, without giving away the farm, backed by a real case study. Behind it, a content pipeline publishes blog and social posts that sound like us and say something real, not just adding more slop to the internet.
ResultConsistent brand presence and a public voice on the topics, methods, and thinking that set us apart.
Highlights
- Company website
- Admin portal
- AI interface
- Blog generation
- Analytics & alerts
- Link management
Client management
How we run the operational side of a client engagement. A second platform, behind a Google-authenticated portal, drafts most of a proposal from our own documentation and codified methods, along with the materials a client had already shared with us for that engagement. From there it carries the work through redlining, version history, and e-signature, then runs the logistics of the relationship. What used to be the most laborious part of winning work is now quick and pleasant to run.
ResultProposal to signed agreement dropped from weeks to days.
Highlights
- Proposal generation
- Agreement management
- Client portal
- Read receipts
- Presentation view
Prototypes
Client prototypes
How we win the work. Rather than explain a concept, I made it tangible: clickable prototypes of the actual app or workflow in days, not weeks. Stakeholders could react to something real and align before our engineering team and technical partners began development. It also gave everyone something concrete to scope and estimate against, instead of a spec each person read differently.
ResultFewer surprises at launch, stakeholder buy-in up front, and a shared reference that held everyone accountable.
Prototyped
- Mobile apps
- Web apps
- Dashboards
Internal prototypes
How I pressure-test my own ideas. I prototyped workflow tools the same way, most of them wiring several platforms together to automate or tighten a process. The ones that earned it folded into the two platforms above; the rest I retired, including any that could not produce a deterministic result. A tool that will not behave the same way twice has no business in an operation.
ResultA fast, cheap way to find out which ideas were not worth building, before one of them became something we relied on.
Prototyped
- Workflow tools
- Integrations
- Automations
I am not a classically trained engineer and coding is not my craft. I pick up tools fast and get expert results, I conceive the workflows and ship our internal tools, and I leave client production engineering to our engineers and technical partners.
What I bring
Different companies, same diagnosis.
Most companies have adapted to systems that should have adapted to them. The double entry, the export to a spreadsheet, the “that is just how it works.” The friction gets absorbed so long ago that nobody counts it as a cost. Working in technology, for my own company and across every client, showed it to me from both sides: as the user living with a system and as the person helping design it. Diagnosing it is the same discipline whether a company sells software or simply runs on it.
I built and ran my own companies and lived with the decisions afterward, so accountability was never abstract. That is why I can tell a plan that reads well from one that will survive contact with a team, and why my instinct is to poke holes while decisions are still forming.
Startups through mid-market, across a wide mix of industries. The problems differ; the diagnosis transfers. Enough repetition gives you a read on the people as well as the product, and shows which problems tend to arrive at which stage.
Companies came to TechNeed to have their plans evaluated, and for six years I sat in quarterly venture forums giving startups the technical read that sharpened their pitch to angels and VCs. Investor criteria move with the market, and watching that shift teaches you what a company needs to prove.
Experience
The track record.
Founding Partner, TechNeed
Digital transformation & AI agency
Co-founded the firm with two technical partners and ran day-to-day operations and business development. Strategy, product, advisory, and every client conversation ran through senior US leadership, with teams in Europe, the UK, and Latin America executing to our specs. The result was white-glove service at a rate that brought real value to clients. Our development teams used AI tooling to deliver client software. Separately, I put AI to work on our own internal operations, starting with the highest-ROI workflows and keeping human oversight on each to manage the risk of adopting early.
Founding Partner, Smart Measures
Health tech
One of five partners, I lead the commercial side: go-to-market, licensing, pricing, and partnerships. My partners built and validated the primary care measure; I built the business around it. The PCPCM is CMS-approved for MIPS, included in a current CMMI value-based care model, and backed by the AAFP and ABFM. For our federal pilot work, I structured the business and operations around the CMS relationship, including how practices could license and use our products.
Operations & BD Director, The Sneakers Agency
Software development agency
Tightened operations with process discipline and stronger pricing. Over three years revenue tripled and margins improved with it, which showed up directly on the profit line.
Business Development Director, MuseAmi
Mobile technology startup
Built and managed more than 100 industry partnerships in a category that did not yet exist, and translated between technical and business teams to shape product.
Business Analyst, Group Outcome
Healthcare investment firm
Managed the company’s books and finances, ran investment due diligence for the CEO, and migrated on-premise software to the cloud.
Background
The rest of the picture.
The toolkit
- Operations & systems
- Process design, delivery management, operational efficiency, small-team leadership.
- Delivery & product
- Agile and SDLC fluency, and product ownership for client teams that lacked one.
- Commercial
- P&L ownership, pricing and margin, financial modeling, contract negotiation, usually working alongside legal to close.
- Tools
- Lovable, Claude, and GPT to build working software and clickable prototypes. Analytics, ClickUp, Figma, no-code web builders, and QuickBooks, among many others.
Affiliations & advisory
- ACT | The App AssociationMember · tech policy
- Connected Health InitiativeMember · health-tech coalition
- Mid-Atlantic Diamond Ventures ForumsTechnical feedback to presenting companies
- Sourland ConservancyBusiness and technology strategy advisor
- Nonprofits and small businessesBusiness and technology strategy advisor
Education
- Rider UniversityB.S. Business Administration, Finance, 2006 · Dean's Scholarship
- NCAA Division I AthleticsSwimming & Diving
Selected writing
Beyond work
50+ races over a decade, 5Ks to Ironman, with an age-group win at the NJ State Championship Triathlon and All-World Athlete status. The ones I still talk about: an off-road iron-distance race, a four-person 200-mile running relay, and a month cycling from Amsterdam over the Alps to Florence.
After my best friend was paralyzed in a biking accident, I was with him through recovery and raced alongside him as his safety on course as he came back as a para athlete. He went on to the Ironman World Championship in Kona; that one was all his.
Family comes first. I'm the chef: I cook most of our meals, half the household is vegetarian, and Friday nights we make homemade pizza with the kids. During COVID I turned our unfinished basement into a place the whole family enjoys. In summer you’ll find us in the Finger Lakes.