Partner-Driven Progress: ATC Development and Corsica’s Success Story

I needed someone that can help me do the plans and engineering, help me phase out the execution of improvements, and help me shape and then execute my strategic vision for our company. And so, I wanted a partner that could deliver that level of teamwork with me because I don’t have a staff. And so far, that’s exactly what I have found in Corsica. Well, welcome to our latest episode of Unraveling IT, Expert Tech Talks. I’m your host today, Jared Lopez. I’m a vCIO at Corsica Technologies. And today, I have the pleasure of speaking with a good friend, Carl Young. He’s the chief information officer at ATC Development. Thanks for joining us, Carl. Thanks, Jared. Glad to be here. Looking forward to our chat. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you don’t mind, would you mind starting kind of give us an overview as far as your background and your career path, as it is today? Yeah. So I am a, a native of South Carolina and, you know, wound up joining the army when I was a sophomore in college. And, from there became a signal officer and, later a systems engineer and later a cyber operations officer, over the previous 27 years. I retired as a colonel, from the Army Signal Corps, in 2021. And I was down here in in Augusta, Georgia, then Fort Gordon, now Fort Eisenhower, where, I did conclude my time. But in that process, you know, I managed to gain a tremendous, set of opportunities and skills, just looking at how really global enterprises work. And coming out of, my time in the army, I had an opportunity with a good friend of mine, the owner of ATC Development, Woody Belangia, who asked for a little bit of help. That help turned into a conversation. The conversation turned into an opportunity, and, you know, we are working together to really make ATC Development become a leader in not only how we do multifamily housing, apartments, is what we do. And, you know, and how do we enable technology for not only our own operations, but to make the lives of our residents even better? You know, Carl, that’s why I like talking to you because when I was looking through everything you’ve done, like, you’ve owned your own businesses. You’ve taught at Greenville Tech. You’ve been in the army in various positions that are pretty amazing. But also not also that. I mean, you’ve been to school your whole life, like you are a forever student. And what I mean by that is you have so many degrees, you have so many certifications. And it’s it. What I love to see in that is something I try to cultivate myself, is that forever learner. And I think that really kind of shows in the pursuit of cyber, the pursuit of IT, and all of these things, is wanting to know more. And I really see that. What kind of drives that for you, Carl? You know, I don’t know exactly what drives it. I’m a naturally curious person. I love just figuring things out and learning. I was a really obnoxious student that if you didn’t overload him with work, he became, a problem, you know, in school. And in fact, I just recently had a conversation with my father who was a banker in South Carolina, did 47 years of community banking and a really phenomenal human in certainly my opinion. But dad said, you know, you don’t know this but we told your teachers from early on, give never let him run out of work to do and always keep him a little bit overloaded. I was like, thanks, dad. Appreciate it. But as a result and just enjoying the process of learning, Yeah. I’ve had an opportunity to become pretty skilled at a lot of different things. You know, one of the things I like to point out is my undergraduate degrees are in liberal arts. They’re history and government, but I’m a technician. And people say, well, that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I disagree. I think the human element in understanding our history, understanding how we govern ourselves, in particular is critical to understanding technology. Especially, we start to venture out in AI and see where the future’s going, how is it gonna go. And people are excited about the bright shiny thing called technology, but we often lose sight of what’s gonna be the impact on people in society and the way we interact. And I think that’s- Yeah. That’s one of those fundamental things that we all ought to learn more of. Yeah. Yeah. No. I love that. So you said that ATC provides homes for people. Right? How do you take that in this in the sense of what you know from history, from your time in the army, from owning your businesses, and all these this knowledge you have and really apply it to ATC? Like, where does that fit in as far as, like, their model and their core values? You know, our core values are the essence of how we do business. In fact, we have a great business model by which I don’t get an annual report on how many IT projects I’ve delivered. I get an annual report on how I stand up to and support our core values. You know, things like “working together”, “be a professional”, “work enhances life”, and it reflects the true character of the owner, Woody, who understands like I do. The person is the most important thing. And sometimes it comes at the expense of the profit. And so what’s our charter? What’s our job? Well, we develop properties. Yeah. We build apartment complexes and we manage. That’s great. That’s not what we do. We provide homes for families. You know, we take care of the families of our employees. And so where does technology come back into play? Well, to me, it’s how can I make my job a little easier? How can I protect the resources that are somehow under or near my umbrella? And, ultimately, how can I improve the lives and outcomes of our people? You know, our 2500 residents and, you know, what they do and our, you know, 60-ish families that work for ATC Development. I’m glad you brought up a couple of the core values. One, I really like, which is it’s funny in one sense because it says value, but it’s “build value”. And I think that’s really kind of what you kind of hammered on. It’s almost like it goes back to what you’re doing is you’re bringing value in everything you do. You see the people as valuable. You see the workers’ lives as valuable. And everything you do kind of elevates that that human touch that really kind of brings out everything in it. Well, and I think, you know, particularly looking at the cybersecurity aspect of exactly that is how do I protect that value? You know? Your information is important. How do I ethically uphold your privacy, you know, manage or enhance your existence in this space. So that being said, within this space, within the people, within the core values and how you operate, Is there any unique challenges that you would say ATC has over other places, or has it been business as usual as far as cyber and just keeping people safe? Two very distinct ways I have to look at my job space. You know, I guess first is the operations and efficacy of the ATC organization. Right? So that’s very traditional in its IT role, you know, making sure your workstations are functioning properly. The mantra that I share with the team is I don’t want you fighting your technology. You know? I want your technology to just work. And really, that’s where Corsica has been a tremendous asset. I’m sure we’ll get into that as a part of this conversation, but you can’t do that by yourself. Sure. I wanted to make sure that the team knows the technology is the tool. My job is to make sure the tool is working as expected. Yeah. The other piece of that is what potential impact, future impact, other impact could technology in general have with our residents. And this is something we’re just scratching at. I, we’re not deep into it, but, you know, think about the potential of technology from, you know, artificial intelligence to anticipate, energy savings. Maybe moving us towards technology technologically enabled greener buildings. Better security. Better response time for known issues. Sensors on air quality, water quality, humidity. If humidity suddenly spikes, you’ve blown a pipe somewhere. Mhmm. And now I’m trying to anticipate a damage to your, you know, your home, where you live. And obviously, in doing so, I improve my business footing as well. Sometimes I don’t always think of myself as a half glass empty kind of person. But when you were talking about, the impact, I was thinking unintentional consequences. Like, you know, you make a change and you don’t know how it spirals down. You were thinking the better way of it, of this is how we can do things better. This is how we can provide a better service. And this is how do we get ahead of these problems with technology? How do we use technology to be the way I always like to think about it is, like a force multiplier. Mhmm. That’s exactly right. So, you know, keep keeping our employee footprint is small means I can kind of afford to do better things for the residents, which improves my product. Obviously that’s a business reason. But then there’s the outcomes that you’re talking about. Yeah. How do I ensure that our Sky Lounge at our new property at the Augustine in downtown, Augusta. How do I make sure that thing’s safe? How do I make sure that come fall when, you know, the Clemson Tigers actually destroy the Georgia Bulldogs in the opening game of the season, that everybody up there is enjoying a great show. You know, that that having a good time. We’re building a social space that’s part of life. Well, my job is to make sure the technology works to enable that. So let me ask you this. Before, you know, we started this relationship of us working together, what would you say are the pain points or even pain points now? I mean, obviously, as soon as we start working together, not everything goes away. Right. But what kind of you experienced before and maybe what is, you know, things as we’re kind of going forward? Well, it’s interesting you ask it that way because just over a year ago, Woody and I were having dinner. We played trivia at a place in North Augusta, and we’re just talking. He says, hey. I think you could help us. And my question to him was, okay. What are your pain points? What hurts? He said, well, come in and talk to the team. And I did. I met with the executive group, and said, guys, let’s on a whiteboard right now, talk through the pain that you know exists. And frankly, it started in in what I would call the small pool of reality of where we are every day. Well, I fight printers, and my computers are old. And I don’t have rapid response when I call, you know, our help desk or whatever. Right? And then as I started talking them through that, we began to understand, well, I don’t have really good resilience. I don’t have the cyber protection posture that I need. I don’t really I’m not training my people to be smart in this very tech enabled world. And these problems get bigger and, you know, part of my job is to help tease those things out to identify the problems that are in line with our priorities, our values, that aren’t always making sure the keyboard’s connected to the back of the computer, you know, a lot larger. And so I would say training is pain points, network control is pain points, network documentation for resilience, resilience, cyber protection, threat detection and awareness, data loss protection, identity management. In my experience, both in the army and in business and in the defense world, perfectly normal, and it’s all a matter of scale. Yeah. These are normal. The- and these aren’t gonna go away. Yeah. So let me ask you this. At what point did when you guys were evaluating everything and, you know, and I work with you, Carl, so I know how you work and I always appreciate how you say this is our problem, but here’s our solution and here’s our phase solution. So at what point did you start talking to Corsica? At what point did we start to enter the picture? So early on, as I was assessing the environment that ATC had, some of our some of our vendor ecosystem wasn’t particularly well aligned. And I started looking for alternatives, because I wanted a partner. Mhmm. I don’t want somebody to just call and help tickets to. I don’t want somebody who just manages firewalls. I wanted a design engineering, service delivery partner because I’m the first CIO of ATC Development. And we’re a half a billion-dollar company. We’re big. We’re strong. We’re complex. And I’m right now, it. And so I needed someone that can help me do the plans and engineering, help me phase out the execution of improvements, and help me shape and then execute my strategic vision for our company, which is for me, it’s pretty simple. Phase zero is assess my environment. I’ve spoken like an army guy. Right? You know, phase one phase one is control my environment. I can’t do anything until you can get your hands on it. You know, phase three is optimize. And then be it down the road, I wanna validate our optimizations, and then I wanna, accelerate change. Right? Not interested in changing for change’s sake. And so I wanted a partner that could deliver that level of teamwork with me. Because I don’t have a staff. You know? Yeah. And so as I was talking to several vendors, some I felt were a little small to provide that level of support. Some were so big they weren’t interested. You know, it- it’s the whole Goldilocks and the three bears thing. You know? Some are too small. Some are too big. Some was just right. And interestingly, what sold me on Corsica was the team that that I met, and I didn’t have any prior connection, other than I knew, you know, one guy who was on your, your one of your, SOC centers and because he used to be my intern. He said, hey. Look at Corsica. Okay. Let me look at Corsica. And I talked to your sales team. And they treated me with such respect. And they didn’t come pitching me the answer to my question without even listening to me. They actually approached me as a human. We approached each other as teammates and they developed trust pretty quickly. And for me, I had to make a fast decision and I had to be able to trust. And not that I’d get hemmed up in a contract that I couldn’t move around in. Sure. But a relationship that we could work with each other. And so far, that’s exactly what I have found in Corsica. Long answer to a short question. No. I mean, it’s good, though. I think it’s- I think you laid it out perfectly as far as what you needed, how you got there, and why you made that decision. So let me ask you, in in all the services that you get from Corsica, what do you I don’t wanna say, like, what’s the most valuable, but what do you like about them? Is it, is there one thing that you like over others, or is it kind of a mix of all of them? It’s it is truly a mix. Okay. Sure. You know, of course, Jared, you’re my virtual CIO. We are, I believe, partners in this endeavor. Absolutely. I think the thing I appreciate most is you and I can work directly and honestly. Hey. There was a problem with this particular deployment. Okay. Let’s do an after action and look at it. Let’s analyze the problem. Let’s constantly improve, and I believe y’all are constantly improving. I know I’m constantly loading the wagon. You know, it’s that level of I know I can pick up the phone. Mhmm. You trust me not to, you know, pick up the bat phone on a small call. But when I pick up the bat phone on a real call, y’all respond. Yeah. And we have that mutual respect that I think works. For me, that’s what matters. Anybody could set up computers. Mhmm. They’re really, I mean, anybody with some training can. But, you know, you know, you understand the level of work we’re trying to do. We’re trying to transform a business. Yeah. And I believe y’all help me with that. I appreciate that. And I think that’s, you know, really what you want in anything. I mean, I think about how it brought me back to like your career and how you do things. And, again, I maybe it’s just impressive seeing what you’ve done and the titles you held and the education you have. But I think that’s what I’ve always about you is that movement forward. You’re not, it’s easy to get stagnant, especially in IT. You see people in IT who stay with the same skill set, stay in the same job, and they never learn anything. They never grow because it’s a lot. It’s an ever changing, landscape. And you have to be, you know, feet on the ground. You have to be learning. You have to be willing to, as Joe Rogan says, you know, ask the stupid questions. Right? Like, I think it’s Joe Rogan that says that. But anyway, I think that’s what he does and everything. Like, he asked asks the questions that nobody else wants to, but then he learns them and then he grows from them. So I think that’s valuable. Well, it’s interesting you put it that way because that was one of the agreements that Woody and I had going into us is, okay. Woody, I’m interested in doing this because I know nothing about property development apartment. I want to learn those trades. That’s interesting to me. And he said, okay. Seems like a fair trade. And, oh my goodness. I have absolutely learned a boatload in the last year and only scratched the surface. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we’ve talked about kind of your pain points and how we’ve helped you with those and kind of expanding your view of everything that’s going on within your organization, but also helping in the planning, the implementation, and really being a partner. Is there any way that our services are really impacting, any way, shape, or form the residents? You know, the people that you’re serving because that’s really the heart at ATC, right, is helping the residents in building that value. Because of where we are right now in our development cycle in terms of what you and I are doing on a daily basis, right now, not yet. Yeah. Because one of the things I gotta do is get a consistent baseline ready to go that I can detect, I can- I can prevent, protect, respond to ensure that the business functions are rolling? I believe that we’re a very short time, away from that part being stable. The conversation I wanna have with you in x number of months is what can we do for the residents? Yeah. You know? And then that’s where I think, like, I know working with the Corsica team, y’all helped me with policy. You’ve helped me with some industry understanding what else is out there. I come from a defense background. That’s- I don’t wanna kill my residents. I actually want to do the exact opposite. So the approaches are a little different. And the opportunity I think is to put our resources together, you know, from a technology background to the breadth of your business course integration and capability development for residents. Hey, what- what’s there? Mhmm. And I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for integration and capability development for residents. We’re not there yet, but I do think we can save money for them, improve money for us, and improve security and capability across the board. So that kind of, like, rolls into the next thing. Right? So as far as, like, the future, like, where in, like, the tech roadmap are you saying, like, this is where I wanna be right here? Is, is there something where in one year I want “x”? And I think, you know, we’ve kind of talked about, like, stabilizing and things like that. But is there anything that you’re looking at where you wanna look back, you know, six months or a year and say, I’m glad we finished “x”. Well, we’re absolutely on a path to do those things, and they’re very boring things. I get my user management and my machine management and all that stuff taken care of. But looking forward, where do I want to be at the next sort of gates is, man, I want to design a smart building. I want to design self-healing appliances or self, self-reporting appliances. Yeah. Man, it’s Augusta, Georgia. It’s 97 degrees today. The thing that that eats our lunch the most in any apartment management firm here is service on air conditioners. Man, if we could find a way to have one that would report five days before that compressor blows and the residents never know it, we just come here’s a new machine. Boom, it’s done. And your air condition always works. To me, that would be Nirvana. I love the purpose you have. It’s like, I want a smart building because I want it to do things for me. I want it to report. I want it to see the things that nobody’s seeing, to report on the things that nobody’s reporting on. And really, when you think about it, what you’re asking for from your building, it’s kind of like cyber services. It’s kind of like a SIM. And you’re the SOC that’s reading it. Right? Like, I wanna know the anomalies that are happening. I wanna know when they’re happening, and I wanna be able to read it and go, these are the things that I need to address. And it’s it is absolutely possible. And I think these are open markets for development. You know? Yeah. You and I both know if I suddenly start getting electricity fluctuations in my HVACs, something’s wrong. Right. Alright. So that’s sensor I don’t wanna get all, esoteric on it, but there’s ways to do what I’m talking about. We may, Jared, you and I may have to go build them ourselves. Yeah. Hey. Listen. That sounds great. I remember listening to a story about it was somebody talking about, like, an investment opportunity. So what’s the one investment opportunity that you were upset that you didn’t move forward on? And they said a guy came to yeah. I put on I had all my stock in Blockbuster. But, he said a guy came up to me and he said, I have this idea for a business where, basically what we’ll do is we’ll pick you up in our car and then we’ll drive you somewhere. And they say, you know, then we’ll and they go, Man, that’s never going to work. People are going to get murdered. And they go, No, it’s gonna be great. Well, it was it was obviously Uber. But when you when you hear that idea, it’s like, That is crazy. Like, why would anyone do that? And I think you don’t know, you know, really, how is that made possible? Technology. You couldn’t have done that with a beeper back in the day to pick somebody up to track, to pay and everything else that it does to protect the company, protect drivers for people to get paid. So yeah. And that’s where looking at your technology, Internet of things. Right? People say Internet of things. And I think a lot of folks still misunderstand some of the key components of what that means. And it’s an ecosystem. How do these things work together or against each other in a common environment? I don’t care if my refrigerator sends me an email says I need to go get milk or maybe I do. You know what I mean? And how does that work make life easier without being exorbitant or exposing you to the privacy concerns? I’m heavy on cyber ethics. Just because I can be big brother does not mean I should be big brother in any way. Well, so kind of wrapping up here. Given everything that you’ve said, all the pain points and kind of some results that have kind of come through there and what we’re looking forward to. Would you say that I mean, just honestly, that you’re in a better place with Corsica? Have they helped you in that? Have they accelerated in any way, shape or form? Or what would be your take on that, I suppose? Well, I’m looking I just published my annual report to the executive council of our company. We wouldn’t be nowhere that we are today without Corsica as a teammate. You help get us where I would say openly. We’re largely on schedule. I’m comfortable with where we are on the on the deviations. And it’s mainly because when you and I and the teams that support us decide on something, it gets done. I don’t have to keep touching the rock as it were. And I can count on how to do it. In fact, we’re, you know, several months into our relationship and that’s getting better. You know, we’re both finding ways to improve that. So this time next year, I think we’ll be even further along. So we moved the needle tremendously from a year ago in this company. And, if I were to win the lottery or get hit by a beer truck tomorrow, the company would be okay. And Well, Carl, let’s hope for the let’s hope for the win the lottery or I think, like, you and I have always said, there’s some sort of rich cousin that comes out, or some relative that says Absolutely. Absolutely. You know? Hey, by the way, and like I’ve said before, Carl, if it happens to me, I’m taking you with me. Sounds like a plan. Listen. I like you, Carl, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about these things and just really to kinda get into your mind and how the business works, what we’re doing to help you, and kind of, the pain points. And I think it really helps understand it takes away the mystery of IT because a lot of times people don’t understand what IT can do for them and how it can help improve their business. They just think it’s this expense I have to pay, these people I have to pay that don’t do anything, but you’re really getting ahead of it. I was just talking to my wife. I have this picture on my phone that I really love. Not of me, I hope. No, no. But it’s a mason jar, and it’s got, like, a few pennies at the bottom. And it says my IT budget before a cyber event. And then the next picture is it full and overflowing, and it says my IT budget after a cyber event. And I think what really you see I mean, obviously, because of your experience and everything else is you invest. You put that time in there not because it’s worthless, but because you’re trying to make people’s lives better, but you’re trying to keep them safe. You’re trying to keep work flowing. Yeah. And for a variety professional, the challenge is communicating to your stakeholders and often the purse holders of this non-fun stuff. No, it’s a cost center. But you’re really going to start communicating in ways to where you’re controlling a cost center. It is like insurance to a point. And then if your business is geared to let technology serve you and your customers, it becomes a profit center or it can. You gotta think about it all the way through. But that takes it does take a Sherpa. Now if you don’t have, an IT professional on your staff, y’all are good partners for doing that. If you’ve got nobody and if you’ve got a professional staff, it makes a really strong relationship on-site and off. Appreciate that, Carl. Well, again, thank you for your time, sir. Hopefully, I get up to Augusta to see you again. Probably not when it’s 97 because I here, I think we’re in the high 80s, maybe 90s. So I’ll So I’ll see you in October. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, here in the south, we we’re just talking about that. You stay inside until the heat kinda dissipates, and then you and then you go outside again. So, but, again, I appreciate your time. Yeah. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you, Jared. I greatly appreciate it. Take care. You too.