In a recent Q&A with Digital IT News, our CEO Jeffrey offered insights into how organizations can approach modernization in a way that is practical, secure, and valuable from day one. The conversation explored his leadership journey, the experiences that shaped his perspective, and the principles guiding C1’s evolution. Jeffrey also shed light on how C1 helped clients close the gap between AI innovation and execution through a customer-centric and outcome-driven approach.
A: I have long believed that technology exists to solve human problems – not to advance for its own sake, and from the start, I approached technology with a focus on design, usability, and real-world impact.
Consulting at Accenture gave me the opportunity to apply this belief, and during my 25 years there, I helped organizations navigate disruption and build resilience by taking a people-first approach to strategy and technology. I learned that transformation fails when leaders focus only on tools and ignore culture, empathy, and clarity of purpose.
C1 appealed to me because the company had strong capabilities and real potential. Its focus on making modernization real and practical also aligned closely with my own beliefs. But the company lacked unity following its rapid inorganic growth, and taking the lead at C1 gave me the opportunity to apply everything I’d learned while serving industries, such as healthcare, education, financial services, and government, where technology directly impacts people’s lives.
A: Many organizations want to benefit from AI but aren’t sure where to start. Their infrastructure and data environments aren’t built to support it.
In response to this, we are focusing on enabling AI to deliver value by ensuring we provide practical, secure IT modernization that is valuable from day one. A key innovation here is that we’re expanding our managed services because we recognized that as AI becomes embedded everywhere, clients want partners who can manage the complexity and ensure security. In particular, our approach is enabling clients to shrink the AI skills gap as part of their ongoing operations, so they can innovate without compromising reliability, security, or financial discipline—and rapidly move from experimentation to real outcomes.
A: C1 makes modernization real, delivering secure, practical solutions for AI-powered communications, infrastructure, and security that drive outcomes from day one. Our services ensure that every technology decision drives greater business value, richer customer experiences, and empowered employee performance. Where others talk about transformation, we make it real—faster, simpler, and more resilient.
We bring together three core capabilities – Communications Experience (CX), Infrastructure Experience (IX), and Security Experience (SX) – but the difference is how we deliver them. We’re vendor-agnostic and fit-for-purpose. The goal is the right solution for the client, not pushing a specific platform – and we prove value through adoption, up-time, security, and cost control.
In Healthcare, for example, we don’t lead with features. We spend time with clinicians and staff to understand their day-to-day challenges. That insight allows us to design solutions that help them work faster, reduce friction, and improve patient outcomes.
Security is another key differentiator. Protecting data isn’t optional – it’s foundational. We apply rigorous security standards, tailor them by industry, and thoroughly vet third-party providers.
Finally, we work with incredible partners, and we package industry-leading vendor technology with our advisory, professional, and managed services to deliver tailored solutions focused on client outcomes.
A: Companies began telling us they were stuck in planning mode – they found themselves saddled with endless AI strategies and pilots that never reached real scale and delivered impact. That set off a light bulb for us, and we shifted how we approached AI projects, emphasizing a “do, learn, do” mindset: start small, learn quickly, and build momentum and scale. This approach is based on ensuring clients begin with people, not technology, and figure out what problem they are really trying to solve, where the friction is, and what outcomes really matter to them. From there, we guide them to focus on data—because AI only works if the data is usable, integrated, and trusted.
This approach has been rapidly embraced by our clients and prospects, and it has accelerated our managed services growth. It is an approach that can easily be adopted by enterprises and other services companies.
With an expanding services strategy and a clear vision for the future, C1 is well positioned to help organizations modernize with confidence while thriving in the years ahead.