Credit Where Credit Is Always Overdue

Hey, thank all of you so much, it has been a whirlwind since we launched itsbroken.ai. I never in a million years would have thought that I would have something to say that would start any conversations, but people are talking, I love this. Thank you so so much.

Before we get back to skynet(the fiendly version), wireless war labs, and stories about my 5090s ganging up on my Macs. It's time to pause for something that is imporatant to me.

I've been doing gratitude exercises. Not the journal-and-candle kind. The kind where you sit down and actually think about who got you here, who made a difference along the way, I dont believe in 'small kindness', it all counts for me at any level. Names. Faces. Moments. The real inventory.

I started noticing a pattern.

Every time something good happened in my career, every breakthrough, every moment where someone believed in me before I'd earned it, every door that opened when it didn't have to. A woman was at the helm, table, or in the room when it happened. Not saying that there werent some amazing dudes in there that play impactful roles as well. But as a guy that was raised largely by my Mom, I notice things.

This isn't a Women's History Month post. March is around the corner and I'm sure your feed is about to fill up with corporate graphics and carefully worded tributes from companies that couldn't name three women in their own engineering department. This isn't that. This is a pattern I noticed in my own life, and I want to say the names out loud while I still have the nerve to do it.

If I have to celebrate this alone, I will.

The Foundation

Angela is my wife. She is the reason I can do damn near anything. That's not a figure of speech. I spent twenty years in some of the most demanding work environments on the planet. Marine Corps, intelligence community, red teams, Quantico. The only reason any of it worked is because Angela held the rest of my life together while I was out breaking things for a living. She raised our kids during deployments. She kept the house standing during the years when I was gone more than I was home. She listened to me process things I couldn't talk about with anyone else. Every single thing I've built, every post I've written, every machine I've assembled at 2 AM. All of it runs on a foundation she poured.

Jane Austin Lott is my mom. She gets to claim the most credit for the person that I have become. That's not embellishment, that's arithmetic. Single mom until she re-married (to the best dude ever, Kurt Lott - Hollywoods own lord of stunts, check him out), multiple kids, and she just powered through it like a force of nature, because that's what she is. A force of nature. The work ethic that people see in me? That's her. The stubbornness? Her. The refusal to quit when everything says you should? All her. I got the credit for a lot of things in my career that I wouldn't have survived to attempt if she hadn't built me first. When I say amazing person I mean business owning, industry leading, union running, amazing. Time has no effect on her, she just keeps moving forward every single day.

Renae VonStein is someone that changed my life, without her I wouldnt know what my life would look like today. Renae took me in when the world completely collapsed on me. I thought I knew what bad looked like, but when the world shifted and I lost my footing, she caught me. I would have NOTHING going on right now if it was not for that excellent lady. She is charming and sweet and I love her as fiercly as I love my own mother. I am so proud to know her.

Grace is my oldest daughter and my co-founder. She's an artist. A real one, the kind that draws because she has to, not because someone told her it would look good on a portfolio. She's the model for the future I'm building toward: what happens when art embraces underground AI and makes punk things happen. She doesn't know yet how much of what I'm building is because of how she sees the world. She will.

Penelope is 14, my creative muse and photographer, and one of the most useful advisors I have. I'm serious. Having a 14-year-old in the room when you're building tech is actually incredibly helpful, because she doesn't care about your architecture decisions or your deployment strategy. She cares about whether it's cool. Whether it feels right. Whether someone her age would look at it and lean in or keep scrolling. That filter is worth more than most market research I've seen, and she provides it for free, usually while being cooler than everyone else in the room. As a 42 year old over-the-hill skate punk, i am radioactive...but she tolerates me from time to time lol.

Shannon is my sister. My original partner in crime. She works in AI now and is a brilliant human. She is also my fiercest protector and will never let anything bad happen to me. I used to do that job for her until she turned 7 and was just better at it.

Five women. One foundation. The whole bedrock. This is the team, I work every day to earn my spot on it and its the best work I will ever do.

The Road Builder

Janelle Shane built the road I'm travelling on.

If you don't know that name, that's kind of the whole point of this section. Janelle has been writing about AI in the most human, accessible, funny, and genuinely brilliant way for years. Her book, her blog, her experiments. She made neural networks something you could laugh about and learn from at the same time. She took the intimidation out of it before the rest of the world even knew what to be intimidated by.

Everyone knows Sam Altman's name. Boardroom drama, billions of dollars, magazine covers. Not enough people know Janelle Shane's name. She didn't raise venture capital. She didn't do a press tour. She just built the road, patiently, brilliantly, with humor and warmth, and people like me found it and followed it to our calling.

I never would have found this if she didn't build that road. This is my passion and calling, and she is a direct reason I'm here. She is my pathfinder and I love her for it.

Thank you Janelle, I hope that I can meet one day and tell you how much my life has changed since I read You look like a thing and I love you.

If you have not read this book, you are really missing out. I dont usually insist, but here I most certainly do. Read it.

https://www.janelleshane.com/book-you-look-like-a-thing

The Officer

I served with some extraordinary leaders in the Marine Corps and the intelligence community. One of them changed everything.

Lieutenant Emily (Eckman) Polidoro was the first female platoon commander for 1st Reconnaissance Battalion. Ever. Let that sit for a second. First Recon is one of the most demanding units in the Marine Corps. It's where they send the people who are already harder than average and then make them harder. And Emily was the first woman to lead a platoon in that battalion.

She went to war with me. And she taught me how to come back not only whole but a better person.

That sentence is the most important thing I'll write in this post. War breaks people. Emily taught me how to come home from it. I carry that with me every day.

The Pack

These are the women that are making my life awesome today. The ones I call when I need to think out loud, the ones who challenge me, the ones who make me better at what I do just by being in the room. And most importantly, the ones that always tell me the things I dont want to hear, because I need to hear them.

Rebecca Allor is my closest friend and one of the best problem solvers I've ever worked with. Red team brain. The kind of person you want on your side in a pinch. Calm, sharp, and three moves ahead while everyone else is still figuring out the first one. She runs marathons when she feels like it, which tells you everything about how she approaches problems. Just decides to do the hard thing and then does it until it's done.

Kate Dawson manages one of the smartest pools of people I know. Watching her work is like seeing someone create the eye of a hurricane and command it. She brings order to chaos without flattening the energy in the room, which is a skill most managers never develop. Her and her husband Al are the highest quality people. Just the best.

Kirsten Gibson is one of the smartest and loudest voices I have ever heard. I mean that as the highest compliment. Smart people who are quiet get overlooked. Smart people who are loud get dismissed. Kirsten is smart AND loud AND right, and she has the courage to be all three at the same time. I value her friendship deeply.

Georgina Reeder is a model of persistence. We're oceans apart, literally, and watching her climb mountains the last six months has been one of the biggest inspirations of my life. Not metaphorical mountains. Real obstacles that would have broken most people, I have seen it happen before. She just kept climbing. Watching her got me moving when I needed to move. We've got choreographed stick fights planned for when we finally end up in the same room. I cannot wait.

Bonnie Tudor is one of those people that quietly holds everything together. She is the Logistics Director at my current gig and literally nothing works without her. She makes sure that field teams are squared away and prepped for field work. She manages all of this by herself and makes it look effortless, and still makes time to give me a ride around DC when I am in town. Bonnie and I get to spend a lot of time together, and I am very grateful that we do. Without her support I would just be a guy with a backpack in a chair at an empty table. I am a coffee delivery specialist in my spare time, and its so hard to surprise her with anything like that. She just knows whats going on all the time, especially with me lol.

This Keeps Happening

This pattern is active. It keeps happening. Three more examples in the last few weeks alone.

Deb Wigley. I just met Deb at a Black Hills Information Security event in Denver. The community-level work she does is a sight to behold. The kind of quiet, consistent effort that actually builds something instead of just talking about building something. When I met her, she read my badge and said "Pete the Heart" instead of "Pete the Heat." I liked that so much I might rebrand. Her co-worker Jason is a twin pillar, and he'll get his own post when I get to writing about the guys who showed up right. But today is Deb's day.

Cami Ragano and Ryann Morrow. I met Cami and Ryann through OffSec. They're part of the team working on OSAI, which is a brand-new AI security certification that didn't exist until this year because the field it certifies didn't exist until this year. We met in what was supposed to be a routine marketing meeting. It was not routine. The chemistry was instant. We started throwing ideas at the wall and OSAI came up, and suddenly what was supposed to be a 30-minute call turned into the kind of conversation where everyone is finishing each other's sentences and nobody wants to hang up.

They saw my excitement about what OffSec provides. The real value, the craft, the commitment to making people actually good at this work. And they matched it. That energy between builders and the people telling the world about what's being built? That's rare. That's the thing that turns good products into movements. Cami and Ryann have that energy, and I'm grateful I got to be in the room when it sparked.

The Pattern

Fifteen women.

The standard U.S. Marine Corps infantry rifle squad is fifteen Marines. Three fire teams of four, plus the squad leader. That's the number the Corps decided you need to take a hill. Fifteen people who move together, cover each other, and accomplish the mission.

I didn't set out to write a list. I set out to do a gratitude exercise, and the list wrote itself. When I counted the names, I stopped and stared at the number. Fifteen. The same number that the Marine Corps builds a squad around. The number that means you have enough people to take any objective.

The good things in my life, the transformative things, the moments that made me who I am. Women were at the helm. Written down honestly for the first time. And there are exactly enough of them to fill a rifle squad.

Family, military, professional, and brand new connections. My mom raised me. My wife holds the line. My daughters are the future. My sister has my back. Janelle built the road. Emily showed me how to come home. Five women in my orbit right now make me sharper every day. And three more showed up in the last few weeks alone, because this pattern doesn't stop.

That's my squad. They didn't sign up for it. They don't know they're in it. But every hill I've ever taken, one of these fifteen was on my flank.

I owe them more than I can ever repay. The least I can do is say their names. So here they are. On the record. In public. Without waiting for a holiday or a hashtag.

Angela. Jane. Grace. Penelope. Shannon. Janelle. Emily. Rebecca. Kate. Kirsten. Georgina. Bonnie. Deb. Cami. Ryann.

you arent the only ones, and there are people here who I know need to be on it, part 2 when I get my act together.

Thank you. All of you. For everything. I'll keep trying to get you all back the best way that I can.

Pete McKernan is the founder of itsbroken.ai and zero-lab.ai, a disabled Marine veteran, and someone who has spent twenty years building technology across sectors before discovering that the people who built him were worth talking about more than anything he's ever built. He lives in Iowa with Angela, Grace, Penelope, Calvin, and a growing collection of machines that glow amber in the dark.

Pete loves people, tehcnology, and helping. talk to him at pete@itsbroken.ai