Chris McCay serves as Vice President for Corporate Infrastructure at Brailsford and Dunlavey, a national program management and development advisory firm supporting higher education institutions, municipalities, sports organizations, and K 12 districts. In his role, Chris oversees IT, corporate real estate, facilities operations, and internal administration. His career path into technology leadership was nontraditional, beginning as a music major before moving through hardware, networking, and business operations. Over nearly two decades at Brailsford and Dunlavey, Chris progressed from IT manager to director and ultimately into an executive role that reflects how infrastructure leadership now spans people, technology, and physical space.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• How corporate infrastructure expanded beyond traditional IT after hybrid work became permanent
• Why facilities, real estate, and technology now operate as one system
• What it takes to transition from managing tasks to developing people
• How AI should function as an ideation and productivity tool rather than a replacement
• Why recognition and culture matter as much as compensation
• How career growth often requires leaving and sometimes returning
• Why startups may offer long term opportunity for early career technologists

In this episode…

Matthew Connor on LinkedIn
CyberLynx Website
Chris McCay on LinkedIn
Brailsford & Dunlavey Website

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by CyberLynx.com  

CyberL-Y-N-X.com.

CyberLynx is a complete technology solution provider to ensure your business has the most reliable and professional IT service.

The bottom line is we help protect you from cyber attacks, malware attacks, and the dreaded Dark Web.

Our professional support includes managed IT services, IT help desk services, cybersecurity services, data backup and recovery, and VoIP services. Our reputable and experienced team, quick response time, and hassle-free process ensures that clients are 100% satisfied. 

To learn more, visit cyberlynx.com, email us at help@cyberlynx.com, or give us a call at 202-996-6600.

Check out other related episodes:

Building Modern Communities Through People-First Technology with Brianne Bustos
The CISO Who Sees Around Corners: Rick Scot on AI, Fraud, and the Future of Security
Building Trust, Not Turnover: Jason Frame's Guide to Public Sector IT

Transcript:

Cyber Business Podcast – Chris McCay, VP of Corporate Infrastructure at Brailsford and Dunlavey

Matthew: Matthew Connor here, host of the Cyber Business Podcast. Today we're joined by Chris McCay, VP of Corporate Infrastructure at Brailsford and Dunlavey. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris: Hello. Good to be here.

Matthew: Great to have you. Before we get too far in, a quick word from our sponsors.

[SPONSOR READ: This episode is brought to you by CyberLynx.com. Do you know if a hacker is in your system? Most people and most companies don't — until it's too late and the hacker has already done damage. A hacker's job is to bypass your security, so companies need a way of knowing when someone has gotten past their defenses. That's where CyberLynx comes in. We've partnered with the best cybersecurity companies in the world to provide our clients with the best solutions at the best prices — whether it's managed SIEM, SOC, EDR, MDR, or XDR. We'll help you find the right solution at the right price. Find out more at CyberLynx.com.]

And now back to our show. Chris, for those who aren't familiar, can you tell us about Brailsford and Dunlavey and your role there as VP of Corporate Infrastructure?

Chris: Absolutely. B&D is a national program management and development advisory firm. We work with higher education institutions, municipalities, sports teams, K-12 school districts, and communities on a wide breadth of work. We do planning, we fund and develop complex capital projects, and we work with clients from visioning and feasibility through financial strategy and procurement into project delivery and long-term operational planning. It sounds a lot like an architecture firm, but that's actually the one thing we don't do — we don't draw the designs. We work as the owner's representative. We are the trusted advisor: if there's something you need to do to make your institution better, we help you get there.

Matthew: Wonderful. Tell us more about your role as VP of Corporate Infrastructure — what it entails and how you got there.

Chris: I had absolutely no intention of going into IT. I was a geeky, artsy kid — a musician. I went to school as a piano major and at one point thought that's all I would ever do. Things did not work out that way. I realized I needed a degree that didn't require five hours of piano practice a day. I also met my wife, who is a music teacher, and she had that path already covered. I went off to figure out what I was going to be in life. I kicked around the idea of being a writer, really wanted to break into comics — that didn't happen either.

I ended up working for a defense contractor, doing odd jobs in their marketing and RFP area. They said, "You've got decent customer service skills, we need someone to answer the phone in the tech department, and we can teach you the technical stuff." I said all right — and 25 years later, here I am. I came up through the hardware side, became a network engineer, eventually finished my degree in business, and then went to work for B&D about 16 years ago. I started as Manager of IT, then moved into the Director of IT role.

About five years ago, our person who managed all of our internal operations — corporate real estate, facilities, and administrative work — was getting ready to retire. Coming out of COVID, we had become a hybrid environment, and he and I had been working very closely together on how to manage technology across office spaces with people working from home and traveling again. The technology world and the facilities/real estate world had naturally converged. As he was approaching retirement, I said I thought I could take that on. The owners gave me a shot. After a year or so, they made it official — VP of Corporate Infrastructure. My portfolio now covers all IT, all corporate real estate, internal operations, and administrative work. I never thought this is where I'd end up, but it's been a constantly evolving world and I've learned a ton.

Matthew: That is fantastic — I don't think we've had a piano major turn tech executive on the show before. Tech really is like the mob — once you're in, you're not getting out. So you're managing both the virtual and the physical infrastructure of the company. Do you find it easy to compartmentalize those two worlds, or do they just naturally blend?

Chris: A lot of it really does blend given the way we work. We have a number of offices throughout the country, and not a single one operates five days a week in-office. We're naturally in a hybrid environment. Ensuring that the technology is seamless no matter where people are is essential to everything we do. Even when my brain is in facilities and real estate mode, I'm still thinking: can they do all their virtual work? Can they manage their meetings, take their calls — even though we don't have a single physical phone device anywhere anymore? I've learned to blend it in my head. And I have a great team that allows me to delegate effectively, so the things I don't have to worry about, I don't have to worry about, because I've built up solid people to handle them.

Matthew: Key to any success. And speaking of the team — going from working geek to managing geek, did you find that transition challenging?

Chris: Yes and no. Even in retail jobs early on, I found my way into managing pretty quickly. I have a big, bombastic personality, so being out front comes naturally. But there's a real difference between managing tasks and actually leading a team — making sure people are growing, developing, and on a path that works for them. That took me the longest time to learn. It's easy to say, "Here are the tasks, go get them done." It's a real process to learn how to say, "You're a young professional — where do you want to go? How do we keep your career growing? Does that align with what the company needs, or does this mean you should eventually move on?" That, honestly, is still the hardest thing I've had to learn in my career.

Matthew: I think you nailed it. IT tends to attract people who love the technology — the gadgets, the code, the blinking things. The people skills are often the more challenging part. And I think as an industry we've gotten a lot better at cultivating the human element than we were in the 80s and 90s. What's your approach when you have someone great on the team but you know the best thing for them is to move on and move up, even if you'd love to keep them?

Chris: I'm still coming to grips with it. I've had some of those conversations go really well and some that went badly, and I try to learn from every one. One thing I love about B&D is that there's always room to grow within the company, which is great. But there have been people who tried different things here, came back, and eventually still had to leave because they were ready for something new. And for a long time I was a ceiling — I was the Director of IT and that was the top of the path. Thankfully the company has grown, I've been able to move up, and there's more room now to say: what path do you want to take? That's honestly the most exciting conversation I get to have with my team now. The tech world is massive and expanding every day, and when I started I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had good people early on who pointed me in directions — away from hardware when we had enough hardware people, toward networking because nobody knew it. That shaped everything. So I try to do the same: let's figure out how we can keep you here as long as it's right for both sides. And when it's time to go, I want to be the one cheering them on.

Matthew: It's like if you love them, let them go. And I think a lot of it comes back to knowing your why — what drives somebody every day. The clearer someone is on that, the better and happier they tend to be. And that ties back to compensation too, which is an interesting piece. Are you paying people not just the market rate for the position, but enough for them to actually be comfortable and happy in their lives? Because if Jane is working a side hustle every night just to make ends meet, you're not getting the best of Jane.

Chris: I absolutely agree. And one of the things I've always loved about B&D is that they are very aware of that. They look at the market value of the person, not just the position. Off-cycle raises happen. Bonuses happen. They ask a lot of us — the standard is high — but they make sure we're taken care of. And I try to carry that same mentality to my own team. If we're going to ask people to work a holiday weekend for a big migration — and we are, we've got a major cloud infrastructure move coming up and it has to go live Monday morning — I'm going to make sure those people get acknowledged for it and get time back afterward. If they know they're going to be taken care of, they don't have a problem doing that extra. That's how I've always felt.

Matthew: That resonates. You know, this reminds me of something from my Army days. Napoleon famously believed he could take over the world if he had enough ribbon — because it's amazing what people will do for that little piece of recognition. It costs almost nothing, but it means everything. And I wonder sometimes if we lose that in the civilian world. How do you translate that? Is it even necessary when you can just give people money?

Chris: I think recognition absolutely still has a place. Money is always appreciated — nobody turns that down. But we do give internal awards, and I always make sure that anything my team accomplishes is framed as we. It's always my team that did this, my guys who worked hard on it. I've been doing this for almost 26 years and I'm not the one hands-on-keyboard most of the time anymore — it's my team doing the bulk of the work, and they need to know that I know that. The company is also good at making sure that appreciation is shared publicly. If you're going to set a high standard, you also have to make sure people get the kudos when they meet and exceed it. So yes — there's still a place for the ribbon, even in the civilian world.

Matthew: Culture is everything. Whatever culture you create permeates the entire organization. And as we talk about the human element and AI — this is where things get really exciting to me. I love AI for productivity, but the security side is where it gets really fun. You can't just bolt an LLM onto your email gateway and call it secure — you're opening yourself up to prompt injection and all kinds of other issues. The right fit matters. Groups like Darktrace, when it comes to email, endpoint, and network security, have been doing machine learning the right way for a long time. It's exactly what you'd expect: AI reading email, understanding the user, catching URLs that haven't been flagged yet because it can see the domain was registered 30 minutes ago. That's AI used properly. So what are you doing at B&D when it comes to AI — balancing the human element, security, and productivity?

Chris: About a year and a half ago, I was having a strategy conversation with the owners about exactly this. We said: AI is already here, it's going to be disruptive in every industry, and we want to be as out in front of it as possible. So we started a series of internal trainings and conversations across all the different tools and use cases. That alone was an incredible eye-opener.

One example: we have a subsidiary company called Centers that operates facilities on college campuses — rec centers among other things. During one of those sessions, one of the guys there said that their janitorial crew had gone home and he found a leak in one of the bathrooms. He took a bunch of photos, asked AI how to fix it, and within two minutes had the answer and got it handled. And he said, "I never would have thought to do that." That kind of cross-pollination is exactly why we keep having these conversations — because people are finding uses nobody anticipated.

On the more structured side, we've started developing internal tools built on our own data. The company has been around for over 30 years, and we have a massive history of projects, plans, and documentation. Using LLMs and natural language processing to ask questions of 30 years of institutional knowledge is a powerful learning and reference tool.

But no matter what we do with AI, all of our training comes back to the same core message: AI is your starting point. It's an ideation tool, a first-draft tool, something to ask questions of and play around with. The cool video editing software, the transcription tools, the features that let you cut a word from the transcript and it disappears from the audio — all genuinely amazing. But it always, always has to come back to the human element. What is the person using the tool actually doing with it? It becomes a companion, not a replacement. That's essential.

Matthew: And that's really the key, isn't it? Are we going to see a lot of jobs change or disappear? Yes, absolutely — just like switchboard operators. But I also think we're going to find that in a few years, all those software developers we thought we didn't need anymore are going to come back and fix everything AI broke. I'm saying that partly with my fingers crossed for my own son who just graduated with a computer science degree. What's your take?

Chris: I agree. And the key advice I'd give anyone in computer science right now is: be good with people and be good at what you do, and you will always have a job. Now is not the time to flinch and run the other direction. Yes, Meta might be over-relying on AI right now and scaling back junior developers. Fine. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other places to go. In fact, it pushes people toward startups — and right now we're seeing thousands of new AI startups. Employee number 5 at the next Google or Apple is a far better outcome than being one of the few Meta kept. When you're 22 with no kids and no mortgage, go try a startup. You have more autonomy, the culture is exciting, and the potential upside is enormous. The bubble will burst — the Internet was a bubble too — but it still changed everything. So go forth and roll the dice.

Matthew: Absolutely. And speaking of your son — what's he up to now?

Chris: He's working at a math tutoring company while he keeps looking. He has a minor in performance as well — we are a family of artsy music people — and he's actually exploring something in the theatre world. And honestly, I think that's great. I have a theory that AI is going to bring about a kind of renaissance — a return to valuing real content creators, real artists, real artisans. People performing and making things again. Nobody wants to see AI Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a plane looking 25. You want to see the actual 95-year-old Tom Cruise doing it and making everyone feel guilty about their workout routine.

Chris: I completely agree. And I think a return to in-person communication is going to be a big piece of it too — whether that's live performance or just picking up the phone to call someone, because the way you verify you're actually talking to the person you think you are is by physically talking to them. We're going to see that come back in a real way.

Matthew: Exactly. And it's never been a better time to be a niche creator. Fifteen years ago if your kid said they wanted to be a YouTube star, you'd have told them the odds were terrible. But in hindsight, there was a massive opportunity there for anyone who loved something specific — and it's financially viable. Love Kermit the Frog? You can be the world's foremost Kermit the Frog expert and make a living from it. It's only going to get bigger.

Chris: It really is. And the technology is going to get us there faster. We'll go through a cultural shift — we always do with major technology changes — but I think it comes out on the side of the creators and the makers. I'm confident about that.

Matthew: Chris, this has been an absolute blast. Before we go, can you tell everyone where they can find out more about you and about B&D?

Chris: Of course. I'm on LinkedIn — please look me up and connect. And B&D's main website is bdconnect.com. We'd love for people to come check it out.

Matthew: Fantastic. Until next time — thanks, Chris!

Chris: Thank you very much.