Music

I’ve been a musician almost as long as I’ve been alive. Picked up a guitar at age five, and 50 years later I’m still at it. In the ’80s, I was all shred, all the time—fast runs, distortion, and the kind of riffs that left no doubt what decade I grew up in. But like me, my playing evolved. These days I’m acoustic most of the time, chasing melody and rhythm with the same intensity I once gave to speed.

My influences are eclectic: fingerstyle innovators like Michael Hedges and Don Ross, storytellers like Butch Walker and the Indigo Girls, heavy hitters like Pantera, and boundary-pushers like Jeff Buckley and Miles Davis. That mix—folk, shred, metal, jazz—is who I am on guitar: never one box, always restless, always learning.

Code & AI

Todd Ballowe, Head of Engineering

As the Head of Engineering & AI at Madison AI, I manage our codebase to deliver the best possible online experiences and custom reports for our clients. I thrive on tackling complex challenges, coding agile solutions, and ensuring seamless digital interactions. I’m passionate about staying ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving tech landscape, delivering innovative, cutting-edge solutions that keep our web presence clean, modern, and impactful.

Madison AI grew out of a collaboration between Erica Olsen (our CEO), David Solaro (Assistant County Manager of Washoe County), and me. Erica brought the vision, David brought the perspective from government, and I brought the engineering and AI know-how to turn it into reality. Together, we built something that takes thousands of pages of government records and transforms them into clear, accurate answers in seconds.

My AI expertise includes everything from designing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems to tuning hybrid search strategies that blend vector similarity, keyword precision, and re-ranking for accuracy. I’ve architected pipelines that handle millions of documents, optimized for speed and cost without sacrificing context. I’ve built skillsets that extract structured meaning from unstructured text, and I know where the hype ends and the engineering begins. That’s why Madison AI works where so many other “AI projects” stall out.

Before Madison AI, I spent 15+ years building enterprise applications for organizations like Make-A-Wish, Kia, and Chobani. That experience gave me the foundation: how to design systems that scale and hold up under real-world pressure. Now, with Madison AI, I apply that same rigor to AI—bridging cutting-edge research with enterprise-grade reliability.

Expertise

  • Python
  • TypeScript / React
  • RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) Applications
  • Azure DevOps
  • CSS 3 / SASS / SCSS
  • HTML 5
  • Data Visualization
  • JavaScript
  • PHP
  • Photoshop

Specialties:
AI & Data: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) • Hybrid Search (vector + keyword) • Large Language Model (LLM) integration • Prompt engineering • AI skillset & pipeline design • Azure OpenAI (GPT-5, embeddings v3) • OCR/Computer Vision • AI cost optimization
Engineering: Python • TypeScript/React • JavaScript • CSS/SCSS • HTML • PHP • SQL (MySQL) • FastAPI • Azure (Cognitive Search, Functions, App Service) • Docker • Selenium
Enterprise-scale architecture • Business & technical writing • Ghostwriting & editorial

Professional Experience

I’m proud to lead the development of our proprietary, award-winning web-based Planning Template and Madison AI. Each day, I aim to push boundaries and deliver exceptional results, ensuring that our digital tools and custom reports exceed client expectations.

Recent Client Work

  • Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department: coded Bureau-specific custom reports, built a crime-data API upload tool, and developed a success factors data integration tool.
  • Region of Durham, Ontario: created a custom report that meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and adheres to Canadian government web standards.

Education

I’m an IWA Certified Web Professional and hold certifications in Google Analytics, Google Mobile Analytics, and Adobe Web Design. I earned my BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois.

Life

I’ve called Reno, Nevada home since the late ’90s. Outside of code and music, my life is grounded by my family: my fiancé Jole (who runs an aerial arts studio that keeps both of us on our toes), my daughter Ruth, and our pack of dogs with outsized personalities—Elvira the Bernedoodle, Barley the Aussie, Eli the rescue potato, and Smidge the tiny Chihuahua who thinks she runs the place.

Writing has always been part of my DNA—I earned my BA in Rhetoric and Creative Writing at the University of Illinois. That love of words still threads through everything I do, whether it’s ghostwriting blogs, writing for Reno Tahoe Tonight, or editing for online magazines. For me, it’s never just code or music or words—it’s how they all work together to build meaning.

Before I ventured into the world of development, I spent years touring the U.S. as a professional musician. While my passion for music remains, my greatest joy now comes from the simple, beautiful moments with my wife and our daughter, Ruthie.

Everything I do—playing guitar, writing stories, building Madison AI—comes down to the same drive: take raw material and shape it into something that matters. Madison AI is the culmination of that instinct. With Erica and David, I’ve helped build a platform that doesn’t just use AI for the sake of AI—it gives people time back, lets them focus on what they’re good at, and creates a model for how technology can serve communities. That’s not just rare—it’s the work of a lifetime.