The Linguist
A PhD is a lot of things. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of “why am I doing this again?” And it isn’t just a credential — it’s a way of seeing. Mine trained me to find patterns in language at the level of cognition: how speakers make choices, what those choices reveal, and what gets lost when the analysis is wrong.
My dissertation focused on polite pronouns within a cognitive linguistics framework — working across Czech, Polish, and Russian, none of which were my native languages. That constraint turned out to be an advantage. Learning to analyze from the outside, to see structure that native speakers take for granted, became the foundation of everything that followed.
At DoD I put that training to immediate use. I started work as a language analyst, translating and transcribing complex materials, and teaching advanced Russian grammar, discourse analysis, and nuanced language analysis to other linguists. The work demanded precision.
The Executive
I spent 21 years at the Department of Defense, growing from language practitioner and technical leader to senior executive. For the first thirteen years I worked as a subject matter expert and technical leader, focused on Russian and strategic adversary analysis. In 2018 I became a Defense Intelligence Senior Level executive — a role I held until I retired in 2025.
As an executive the focus shifted: from individual analysis to building the conditions for good analysis at scale. That meant developing tools for analysts, designing and teaching training programs, managing large organizations and budgets, and advising on AI/ML and analytics capabilities. But the thread running through all of it was the same one that started in graduate school — pattern recognition, precision, and the consequences of getting language wrong.
The Consultant
I took early retirement from DoD because I wanted to apply what I know somewhere it’s desperately needed.
AI is transforming how organizations handle language — translation, analysis, communication, governance. Most of that transformation is happening faster than the understanding of where it fails. I built AC Stepan WordWorks to help close that gap: to advise organizations on the real benefits and risks of AI when it comes to human language, culture, and meaning.
I also believe in using AI for good. As a volunteer with the Texas Czech Legacy Project, I’m part of a team using AI-assisted transcription to preserve an endangered dialect of Czech spoken only in rural Texas — scaling what would otherwise be impossible work. That’s what responsible AI use looks like in practice.