About Rob

A software engineer by trade, a historian by training.

The longer version — where I’ve been, what I learned there, and why I point a compiler at the work I do now.

Hi — I’m Rob.

I’ve spent thirteen years shipping software at startups. I cut my teeth at SugarCRM, helped build Boxee (whose technology Samsung acquired), and then spent years at Twilio, where I led developer evangelism. Somewhere in those years I learned the thing that still runs my life.

“Developers have the greatest reach that humanity has ever seen.”

A software engineer by trade and a historian by training, I later spent a year as a technical consultant for counter–human-trafficking units across the United States. What those law-enforcement partners showed me, I couldn’t walk away from.

So I founded childsafe.ai — the world’s first AI platform built to combat online child abuse — to write machine-learning software that starves the macroeconomy fueling modern slavery of its wealth, anonymity, and distribution. It monitors online conversations and intercepts them at the moment a child is about to be sold for sex, using chatbots and decoy text messages to deter buyers before a transaction can happen. It is the hardest and most worthwhile thing I have ever pointed a compiler at.

When I’m not doing that, I play in a punk rock band, ship small strange things on GitHub, and remain the loudest Red Sox fan in New York. Enjoy yourself — it’s later than you think.