Drew Conrad

Researcher. Builder. Cancer survivor. Studying what happens when AI agents are left to figure it out themselves.

The Build

Twenty years building AI and digital engagement systems inside contact centers, scaling them across the enterprise, and eventually leading the companies that build them. The arc begins on the phones at AT&T in 1999 and runs through senior project management, senior product management, product leadership at XSELL Technologies, and into the C-suite as Chief Operating Officer at Consumer Opportunity and Chief Executive Officer at apoge.io.

Along the way the through-line never really changed. Systems that put intelligent tooling behind the people doing the work, measured longitudinally, rolled out across tens of thousands of agents and dozens of sites. The titles moved; the questions stayed the same. How do you build something that makes a human better at their job. How do you prove it worked. How do you scale it without losing the humans in the middle.

Chief Executive Officer, apoge.io
2024 - 2026
Co-founded and led an AI tooling company built on the premise that AI should empower people, not replace them.
Chief of Staff & Head of Customer Success, XSELL Technologies
2019 - 2023
Scaled contact center technology implementations from 1,200 agents at 6 centers to more than 20,000 agents at over 50 centers globally.
Senior Manager, Product Management & Digital Engagement, AT&T
2014 - 2019
Designed and shipped CoBot, a human-augmentation AI program for 25,000 agents that lifted conversion over 10% and contributed a +$100M lifetime-value gain.
View full professional history on my CV →

The Detour

In late 2019, I was diagnosed with bone cancer. For four years I fought through radiation, chemo, and uncertainty -- at one point working from a portable desk while bed-bound for six months. In 2022 I was told to prepare for the worst.

In September 2023, I quit my job and started living. I hiked the Santa Monica Mountains, visited the U.S.S. Iowa, watched a SpaceX launch. Thirty days later, my medical team called with news of an emerging gene therapy treatment.

I am now cancer-free, for the final time. I walked away with a profound appreciation for life and a renewed sense of purpose.

The Rebuild

Surviving was the beginning, not the end. What came after has two halves that feed each other. One is ECHOIT, founded in 2026. An AI development orchestration platform that turns Claude Code into a governed software development team, designed and built end-to-end using AI as the primary build tool and directed by two decades of product practice. It is the commercial expression of what I now do every day.

The other half is research. In 2025 I entered the Consciousness and Society PhD program at the University of West Georgia, a program that treats psychology as a human science grounded in humanistic, critical, and transpersonal traditions. My research question sits at the intersection of that tradition and the tools I spent twenty years building: what emerges when AI agents are governed by psychological need hierarchies rather than reward functions? Project Emergence is the active simulation where those questions get tested.

The rebuild is not only research and product. It is also a commitment to the next generation. I serve as Scoutmaster of Troop 113 in Rome, Georgia, a third-generation Eagle Scout passing that legacy forward, and I coach the 100 Black Men of Rome's Kemet Robotics FLL team, mentoring young engineers in robot design, programming, and professional presentation. On a day-to-day basis, those roles are as important as anything else on this page.

Founder, ECHOIT
2026 - Present
AI development orchestration platform, built end-to-end with AI as the primary development tool.
Doctoral Student, UWG Consciousness and Society
2025 - 2028 (In Progress)
Researching emergent behavior in AI agents governed by Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
View full academic CV → Research program → Full service record →

Education

University of West Georgia
Doctor of Philosophy, Psychology: Consciousness and Society (2025 - 2028, In Progress)
Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management
Product Development and Leadership Series
University of Nebraska at Kearney
BS, Sociology and Women's Studies
Project Emergence Writings Curriculum Vitae LinkedIn ECHOIT