About

I studied history before I studied anything else.

Everything since — the classrooms, the headmaster's office, the technology work, the call center — has been one long study of how people and institutions learn under pressure.

I currently serve as a manager at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, where I lead an EBT Call Center that supports roughly 1.4 million clients and distributes about 2.7 billion dollars in benefits each year. That work keeps me close to real constraints, real stress, and real consequences.

Before that, I spent many years in independent schools as a teacher and leader, with responsibilities that ranged from classroom teaching and curriculum design to technology integration, governance, finance, and accreditation.

Across these roles, the through line has been the same: helping people and organizations see clearly where they are, and then make decisions that are honest about the systems they inhabit.

If something here connects with a question you're carrying, start a conversation.

Selected background

Public service

Manager, NC DHHS EBT Call Center (2025–present).
Supervisory and systems roles within NC DHHS since 2012, including technical and support functions for state eligibility systems.

Education & leadership

Leadership and teaching roles in independent schools, including head of school, director of technology, and curriculum leadership responsibilities.
Experience in governance, financial management, accreditation processes, and organizational restructuring.

Academic and professional foundations

Background in history, applied economics, and educational leadership coursework.
Long‑term involvement in assessment, accreditation, and professional development across K–12 and higher education contexts.

How I think

A few commitments that shape the work.

Commitments in practice

Clarity before action. The first task is to see the situation and system clearly, even when that complicates the story.
Learning under constraint. Most real work happens with limited time, attention, and resources. Plans have to respect that.
Stress as a systems issue. Stress and burnout are rarely just individual failures; they are often signals about structures and expectations.
Selective engagement. I do not take on every project. Fit, seriousness, and timing matter more than volume.

Where this shows up

In The AI Pilgrim, a series that reads the AI moment through historical analogy rather than hype.
In work on stress and self‑care that treats people as more than productivity inputs.
In an AI‑supported career exposure assessment designed to broaden options rather than narrow them to a single path.
In a forthcoming book and assessment framework on organizational learning, aimed at surfacing where teams struggle to adapt and why.
In selective consulting and 1:1 work that favors depth, context, and honest constraints over quick fixes.

Off the clock

The rest of the ecosystem.

Away from systems and spreadsheets, I cook. My YouTube channel, Eric Cooks with Family & Friends ↗, exists to preserve the family recipes and kitchen traditions that don't survive unless somebody writes them down — or better, films them. The historian's impulse, pointed at supper.

The personal writing lives here too. Rants & Recollections is where the pieces go that don't belong in a white paper: coffee, theology, grandmothers, and the occasional rebuke.