Staff · Columbus, OH

Jim Locke III

Technology executive · Army officer & chaplain · AI founder

For thirty-five years I've worked one intersection: where powerful technology meets institutions that people have to be able to trust. I've run the IT of a county of 1.2 million, advised commanders in three combat theaters, and today I build AI systems in my own lab. Every chapter taught the same lesson — adoption follows trust.

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Years in technology

0.0M

Constituents served as county IT director

$0M

Budget under direct & indirect oversight

Combat theaters — Iraq · Kuwait · Syria

One story

One story, three careers.

It looks like three lives. It's one thesis, proven three ways. Choose a chapter:

Government isn't a vertical — it's a different physics.

As Director of IT for Franklin County, Ohio, I ran the technology that 1.2 million constituents and 3,500 county employees depended on — 75+ staff, a $10M direct budget with $130M in indirect oversight, and more than 100 applications, many of them legacy systems that could never simply be turned off.

Procurement rules. Public accountability. A dozen stakeholders who each hold a veto. I don't know this from a sales playbook — it was my job. When an agency CIO explains why a rollout is hard, I can answer: I've written that policy, carried that pager, and briefed that county board.

Improved agency efficiency 10%+ in two years by redesigning process workflows
Authored the county-wide Mobile Technologies Policy for 3,500 employees — still in use
Initiated the county's first enterprise disaster-recovery plan across agencies

0.0M

Constituents

IT staff led

Applications managed

$0M

Budget oversight

The evidence matrix

What teams ask for. What the record shows.

Prior state & local government experience

Ran a county's IT — 1.2M constituents, 3,500 employees, 100+ applications, $10M direct / $130M indirect budget.

Years in customer-facing technical roles

25+ years across Accenture, an independent consulting firm, and Argos — clients from startups to BP, SBC, and McDonald's.

Complex, multi-stakeholder buying cycles

Written the procurement policy, carried the pager, and briefed the county board — from the government's side of the table.

Technical content for every audience

Briefed everyone from privates to boards of commissioners — a chaplain's cadence with an engineer's accuracy.

Hands-on AI fluency

Builds with frontier LLM APIs daily and operates multi-GPU local-model servers. Not AI-curious — AI-practicing.

Trust under real pressure

15+ years a commissioned officer; Iraq, Kuwait, Syria; active Secret clearance held throughout.

Building now

The proof is running in the lab.

HeartID — cardiac biometric identity

Identity verification from a person's unique heart-rhythm signature, built on two NASA-licensed patents with homomorphic encryption and inherent liveness proof — deepfake-resistant by physics, not policy. In pilot with state and municipal government.

Active pilots · Zero-Trust aligned

Multi-GPU local LLM infrastructure

Self-designed multi-GPU inference servers running open-source language models entirely on-premises — the architecture conversation government buyers actually want to have, answered from experience.

Operational · Self-built

Frontier-API agents in production use

Daily builds with frontier LLM APIs for grant-application triage, document intelligence, and constituent-services workflows aimed squarely at public-sector pain points.

Daily practice · Applied AI

Prevention data platforms at scale

Data-driven assessment and reporting infrastructure supporting integrated prevention programs across a five-state military region — technology in service of measurable human outcomes for 4,400+ soldiers.

Five states · Human outcomes

The working archive

Three decades of building. Open what interests you.

Pulled from the actual working files — prototypes, platforms, programs, and a few pursuits that keep the engineering honest. Filter by area, expand what you want to see.

Projects & programs

Active or in build

Disciplines

The pattern across all of it: find the real problem, build the working answer, keep what earns its place. Today that means identity you can't spoof, gear you can't lose, grants that get funded, ballots you can verify, and sound you can steward.

Range

Depth where it matters.

Government & public-sector fluency

County CIO · procurement · policy

Executive communication

Privates to boards of commissioners

Client-facing technical consulting

25+ yrs · Fortune 500 to city hall

Crisis & high-stakes leadership

Three combat theaters

Applied AI & LLM systems

Local inference + frontier APIs, daily

Human-centered design

BFA Industrial Design · Pforzheim, Germany

"In a combat zone, nobody follows a leader they don't trust. I've found technology adoption works exactly the same way."
— Jim Locke III

The perspective I add

Seeing the people on the other end of the system.

Public-sector AI will touch benefits, records, and public safety. Deploying it well means seeing all of the people on the other end of the system — six decades lived across the communities that public technology is supposed to serve, turned into a professional discipline: cultural competency consulting.

I've built a career translating between worlds that don't share a vocabulary — engineers and elected officials, commanders and congregations, builders and the communities they build for. That's not a soft skill. In this work, it's an architecture requirement.

Cultural competency as professional practice — not a footnote

Translator between technical, civic, military & faith communities

Ethics training (M.Div.) applied to real deployment decisions

The journey

Three decades, one direction.

2020 — Present

CEO & Partner

Argos Advanced Solutions, Inc.

Applied-AI firm: biometric identity (HeartID), immersive training platforms, local LLM infrastructure, and AI strategy for government and enterprise clients.

2009 — Present

Major · Chaplain

U.S. Army National Guard

Commissioned officer; deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, and Syria; CJTF Command Chaplain (OIR) and Deputy Operations Chaplain, ARCENT. Active Secret clearance.

2013

Master of Divinity

Payne Theological Seminary

Ethics, organizational management, pastoral care — the ethical framework beneath every leadership role since.

2010 — 2012

Director of Information Technology

Franklin County Data Center · Columbus, OH

County-wide technology strategy: 75+ staff, $140M direct/indirect budget oversight, 100+ applications, 1.2M constituents. Gartner CIO Academy, 2012.

1991 — 2010

Founder · President & CEO

Team Omega Incorporated + Accenture (1991–99)

Technology consulting and multimedia for Fortune 500 clients and government agencies; teams of 9–25; 38% margins on billable work.

1991

BFA, Industrial Design & Media Communications

University of Illinois · Pforzheim School of Design, Germany

Human-centered design training that still shapes every system built since.

Let's talk

I've spent a career earning trust. I'm ready to put it to work.

If you're building technology that institutions and the public must be able to trust, I'd like to hear about it. Résumé, references, and a full portfolio are available on request.

chjimlocke@gmail.com

jim-locke-iii

Personal

digitalchaplain.com

Company

argosadvancedsolutions.com

My personal goal is to

Intertwine my gifts and creativity to develop methods and processes to serve humankind and improve the quality of our interconnectedness.

Available for applied-AI, GTM & public-sector technology roles · Jim Locke III · Digital Chaplain

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