About
I'm Jay Burgess, Founder & Managing Director of Revuity Systems, an operational systems company.
I build the systems that make organizations easier to run.
My work starts with understanding how an operation actually works: the people, processes, information, policies, incentives, decisions, and technology that combine to produce its current results. From there, I figure out what needs to change and design the systems that make that change real.
Sometimes that means redesigning a workflow. Sometimes it's better data and decision infrastructure. Sometimes it's automation, software, or AI. The technology is a means to an outcome, not the starting point.
Most recently, I led the development of a production compliance and decision-support system for a regulated organization that contributed to $2.7M in new client revenue within three months. Over the past 15+ years, my work has included building data capabilities at Walmart and supporting governance and executive reporting across a $6B+ marketing operation at Adobe.
My background crosses business operations, data science, technology, architecture, and leadership. I hold an MBA and M.S. in Data Science from Eastern University, a Graduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence from Harvard University, and an M.Ed. and B.A. from LMU.
The common thread through all of it is systems.
Organizations rarely have isolated technology problems. They have systems producing outcomes they no longer want. Adding another tool to the same system usually doesn't fix that.
That's what I write about here.
What I write about
Systems thinking
How constraints, incentives, feedback loops, information, decisions, and human behavior shape organizational outcomes.
Business and operational systems
How to understand the way work actually happens, diagnose what's getting in the way, and design better ways of operating.
AI and agentic systems
Where AI genuinely changes how an organization can operate, what works in production, and where the hype gets ahead of reality.
Strategy and decision-making
First-principles thinking about tradeoffs, opportunity cost, uncertainty, and designing a path from the current state to a desired outcome.
The philosophy of systems
I draw heavily from Taoist ideas such as wu wei: non-forcing, understanding the nature of a system, and working with its underlying dynamics rather than constantly fighting them.
How I think
Systems first.
Before asking what should we build?, I want to understand why is the system producing this result?
That's a question I've been asking in one form or another throughout my career.
I grew up in South Los Angeles. A lot of my perspective comes from learning to understand systems that weren't necessarily designed with me in mind, finding leverage within them, and building my own path forward.
Where to find the rest
Revuity Systems
Books
Agentic Engineering
The Forward Deployed Engineer
Jay's Art of Systems Thinking
The Way of Becoming
