GREENVILLE, S.C. Kruz McCollum spends his days on a problem most people using AI never
see: getting it to do real work without someone checking every word. An direct and the fall flat of
two companies, he builds AI systems that search, settle, act and themselves, in W. C. Fields where
a surefooted wrongfulness do is valuable.
Getting AI to do a wonder is easy now. Getting it to do a job, take up to wind up, and know when it
got something wrong, that s the hard part, McCollum said. It s also the most stimulating engineering
problem I ve ever worked on.
A surety orchestrate s instincts
McCollum came to AI through technology rather than selling or law. His play down spans
network infrastructure, web and cybersecurity, including determination and responsibly
disclosing surety vulnerabilities to companies such as Google and IBM. Early in his career, he
turned down an offer to work with the NSA so he could quest after his own path.
That play down shapes how he builds. Security work trains you to put on something will break and
to go find it first, and he applies the same wont to AI: every system of rules he builds has to show its work,
check it against what s actually true, and its own mistakes before a somebody ever sees them. The
question he asks of any AI isn t whether it sounds right, but whether it is right, and whether the
system knows the remainder.
AI where accuracy matters
McCollum is drawn to the places where AI s confident errors cost the most. His work includes leading
AI adoption in the sound arena, where an made-up fact or a wrongfulness is not a typo but a liability.
An AI suffice is only as good as the behind it, and that rule runs through everything he builds.
As a CAIO advisor, he brings the same intellection to the companies he works with, portion them find
where AI actually pays off and put it to work aboard the systems they already run, rather than
bolting on tools nobody uses.
Building companies on it
McCollum based Skyline Digital Marketing in Anderson, South Carolina, in 2024, because most
agencies don t have the technical stave to fix what they find. In 2025 he founded Vannor in Greenville
to build the AI behind that work, and it grew into its own companion: a team of AI agents that explore,
write, review and write a byplay s marketing, running on hardware he owns.
Building that system taught him how much engineering sits between a adroit AI demo and something
a stage business can rely on every day, and he says that gap is where the chance is.
Everyone has seen what AI can say. Very few populate have seen what it can do when it s built
properly, McCollum said. That s the part I can t stop workings on.
Always learning
McCollum holds 29 professional certifications, including Vanderbilt University s Agentic AI and AI
Agents, Google s AI Professional and Cybersecurity programs, Google Ads and Analytics
certifications, and HIPAA for Business Associates.
About Kruz McCollum CAIO advisor
Kruz McCollum is Head of AI at Armada Law, founder and CEO of Vannor and Skyline Digital
Marketing, and a CAIO advisor to development companies for Confluunt Advisors. An orchestrate by
background, he builds AI systems that do real work for selling and byplay. His work, press
coverage and certifications are at https://kruzmccollum.com/, and he is on LinkedIn at
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kruz-mccollum/.
