Speaking
Available for speaking engagements
I speak on legacy modernization, technical due diligence, engineering leadership, and the practical realities of AI in software development - for executive audiences, CTO peer groups, and investor and portfolio company events.
What I speak about
Each talk is grounded in 30 years of hands-on enterprise software work - not theory. I've made the decisions, lived with the consequences, and can speak to what actually happens inside the kinds of systems your audience is responsible for.
The Legacy System Decision
Rebuild, refactor, or live with it - and how to know the difference
Most organizations with legacy systems know they have a problem. Few know how to frame the decision correctly. This talk covers how to assess a legacy system's actual cost, what the rebuild vs. refactor tradeoffs really look like in practice, and how to present that analysis to a board or executive team. Based on 18 years stewarding a 20-year-old enterprise platform and designing two successive replacements.
What Technical Due Diligence Actually Looks Like
What to ask, what to look for, and what sellers won't tell you
Technical due diligence is often treated as a checkbox. It shouldn't be. This talk covers how to evaluate a software acquisition's real technical condition: what the codebase quality signals, what the infrastructure architecture implies about future cost, how to read a team's practices from the code they leave behind, and how to translate that assessment into risk and remediation terms a non-technical buyer can act on.
Building Technical Leadership Into a Growing Company
When to hire a CTO, what that role actually does, and what fractional means
Most founders wait too long to address technical leadership. By the time they hire, the patterns are entrenched and the debt is deep. This talk covers what technical leadership actually does (that your senior developers aren't doing), when it becomes critical, what to look for in a CTO candidate, and when a fractional engagement makes more sense than a full-time hire - and what that looks like in practice.
AI in the Engineering Workflow: What Leaders Need to Understand
Not what AI can do - what it's actually doing in your engineering org right now
AI coding tools are already in most engineering teams, whether leadership knows it or not. This talk covers what AI-assisted development actually looks like in practice, what it changes about how software gets built, what it doesn't change, and what questions every engineering leader should be asking their team. Based on daily production use of AI coding tools and building production AI agent infrastructure on the Anthropic Claude platform.
Format and audience
Talks run 30 to 60 minutes with time for Q&A. I'm comfortable as a keynote speaker, a panel participant, or a roundtable facilitator - and I'll adapt the depth and framing to the audience in the room.
I speak to mixed rooms. If half the audience is technical and half is not, the talk works for both. I don't use jargon without context, and I don't oversimplify for the technical people in the room. Twenty-eight years of translating between engineers and executives is the background the talk comes out of.
I don't do vendor pitches. The goal is to give your audience something they can use - a decision framework, a way to think about a problem they already have, or a clear picture of a risk they hadn't named yet.
About Corey
I spent 18 years as Technology Architect at Old Republic Home Protection, one of the country's largest home warranty companies. In that role I stewarded a 20-year-old legacy enterprise platform, designed and built its Angular/Spring Boot microservices replacement, and then designed a second cloud-first system on Azure. That arc - legacy stewardship, modernization, greenfield rebuild - is the practical foundation the talks come from.
I still write code every day and build and operate eight live software products. That keeps the judgment current. I'm not speaking from what enterprise software looked like fifteen years ago - I'm speaking from what it looks like now, including what AI-assisted development actually does to how teams work.
For 18 years I explained complex technical decisions to non-technical executives and department heads. That experience is as central to how I work as the engineering itself. I understand what a board of directors needs to hear about a technical risk, and I know how to frame it so they can make a real decision.
Invite me to speak
Tell me about your event, your audience, and what you're hoping attendees get out of it. I'll let you know quickly whether it's a fit.
Get in touchOr reach me directly: info@coreyklass.com