Curiosity has been the compass guiding Chandra Brubaker through every chapter of her extraordinary life. From taking apart her first computer as a ten-year-old to leading in the world of AI and cybersecurity, Chandra shows what can happen when you dig into curiosity and never stop learning. In this conversation, she opens up about her journey from entrepreneur to tech executive to futurist, how she finds strength in reinvention, and why she believes curiosity is the antidote to fear. The discussion flows from ethics in AI to innovation in everyday life and the importance of creating technology that connects and protects. Chandra’s story reminds us that curiosity is not just a trait—it is a way of moving through life with purpose, courage, and imagination.
Music courtesy of Dealer’s Choice Sound Recordings, Inc.
Music artist: djezi
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Dig Into Curiosity: A Journey Through Tech, Tenacity, And Transformation With Chandra Brubaker
The Olivia Pope Of Technology
The Visionary: Chandra Brubaker’s Tech Journey Begins
Welcome back to Boss Leap. I’m Dr. Angela Walker, and I’m here with my brilliant and beautiful co-host, Dr. Sylvia Morris. Our guest is a visionary at the intersection of technology, innovation, and imagination. A former tech executive turned entrepreneur and futurist. She’s also been called the Olivia Pope of technology, solving complex problems with creativity and precision. When we finish this interview, you’ll know exactly why they call her the Olivia Pope.
From AI to cybersecurity to the future of smart living, she’s helping us understand how technology can empower, protect, and connect us. From AI to cybersecurity to the future of smart living, she’s helping us understand how technology can empower, protect, and connect us. During the interview, she brought up the aspect of living the second half of our lives. That brought us to thinking about what we’d like to do.
For me, in the second half of my life, I’m living to choose with deep intentionality in everything I do. Guided by faith, family, and purpose, I want to pour into my children, cherish my friendships, and make space for the people and experiences that truly matter. My work now is about traveling lighter, doing away with things that no longer serve me, making a purpose to serve others in the best way that I know how, and using what I already know.
We’ve talked about this in several interviews, I think, using the things that I already know. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel to uplift women on their journeys. I don’t feel like I’m reinventing myself per se, but I’m refining how I show up for myself and for others. Hopefully, using mindfulness, gratitude, which we talk about all the time, and absolute joy. How about you, Sil?
I love that. Love, intentionality, gratitude, evolution. That is absolutely fantastic. It was such a fantastic conversation, and I’m excited for our listeners to hear what we’ve talked about. When I think about the second half of my life in my mid-50s, I’m proud to say, there are probably three key words. For me, it is authenticity. It is also just wellness.
Doing all the things from a mindfulness perspective, from a health perspective, from an eating perspective, to make sure that I am well and can enjoy life. The third word is fun. Doing the things that bring me joy and using all of my skill sets to do work that is meaningful for me, and also to spend time with people that I know and may know in the future, that also bring me joy. When we get into our conversation, the next voice you will hear will be Chandra Brubaker.
Welcome back to the show. As we promised, we are here with Chandra Brubaker from Brainchild Technologies. Chandra, we’re so excited to have you. We’re certainly speaking to something outside our wheelhouse. We are really eager to learn everything that you have to share. Along those lines, we’d love for you to tell the person that’s listening, maybe a little bit of what they may be able to walk away from that they may be able to use in their everyday life, or just something you think is pertinent for them to understand.
Thank you for allowing me to be a part of the show. I’m very excited and happy to be a part of it. One of the things that I think is important for everyone in the times that we are living in right now is to find some way to dig into curiosity. Curiosity is what helps educate us. It helps propel us forward, and it helps us align ourselves with where we’re going in terms of technology. Technology moved at a slower pace, but now technology is moving so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up with all the changes that happen on a day-to-day basis. It’s really important to start with curiosity because curiosity will dig into education, which will help us move forward.
Curiosity educates us, propels us forward, and aligns us with our path. Share on XFueling The Future: Curiosity, Early Engineering & Family Influence
I love that. Curiosity is so important. Certainly, curiosity, I’m sure, is what has driven you into technology. How did your love for technology begin? How did that evolve into being an executive as well as an entrepreneur?
I believe that you’re right. Everything with me started out as curiosity. I asked so many questions as a kid, like, “Why does the moon follow me?” I just could not understand why I could see the moon from everywhere. Why does the moon follow me?
I love that the moon was following you.
It was following me. It really was. Entrepreneurship was really the first thing that propelled me. It really wasn’t technology in a sense. It’s some sense of ownership, but I can tie technology back to when I was a kid. I grew up in Griffin, Georgia, which is about 45 minutes outside of Atlanta. You have a home, small-town feel, but I’ve still felt that big city vibe. My mother would go to New York and would come back and talk about New York. I was like, “I’m going to take the leap.” When I was a kid, my mother won a computer. She was an accountant at a bank, and she won it and brought it home. The first thing I did was take it apart because I wanted to see how it worked.
Are you also an engineer in trading?
Absolutely.
Here’s the question. Did you put it back together again?
That was a thing. I had a Polaroid camera, and I took pictures of it before and then of every component that I took out. I had a little dictionary to look up the components, but I knew if I had pictures, then I could put it back together. I remember she was cooking dinner, and she said to me, “When I get done, you’d better have that computer put together.”
Chandra, how old were you?
This was probably the ‘80s. I had been about maybe 10, 11, or 12. Something around that age. I knew better. The curiosity in me was just like, “I don’t understand how it was presenting itself on the screen. I got to figure this out.” That is what started off the technologies in the engineering sense. My father worked for Ford for 40 years.
Both Ford Motor Company?
Yes, at the Tateville plant here in Atlanta. He was a tinker, so he could put things together based on what he did for a living. My mother was highly technical. Everything we had was technical. Whether it was a box that gave you these words, I don’t know if you remember this little box they had back in the day. It was a hangman box, and it would have these like lines, and you had to figure out.
Yes, the words.
I mean, like every boombox you could think of. We had so many little technology gadgets that you couldn’t help but be intrigued or interested. That’s where the love of technology, because in our age groups, the X generation is on the cusp of every invention from the start of IT all the way up to what it is now. That is where I got my engineering spirit.
It sounds like what I’m hearing altogether is you were pretty much came into the world with this curiosity, but you also have these interesting people in your life. Your dad, who worked for Ford, and self-describe himself as a tinker. Your mom, again, this is another, I think outside the box for women in that era to be an accountant with a bank, but she loved the technical aspects.
You couldn’t help to be curious about what was all around you. Also, it sounds like some acceptance of your curiosity because you were given the opportunity to put that computer back together again, versus what may have happened to many children at that point if they had taken the computer apart. Some confidence in your parents in you, that, yes, you could probably do it.
The Entrepreneurial Spark: From Hair To Italian Ice & Beyond
I was just accepting that I would probably get in, but my butt was whooped. I accepted that first. I’m just going to take this L and then if I win and I get it done, then I’m okay. My love was entrepreneurship. When I moved to high school, I started to realize that everybody wants to look good. They want their hair done. They want their outfits done. I was very good at doing hair. What I would do is I would do hair at home, and then just charge people to do their hair. Back then, the ponytail bob was the thing.
This is the early ‘90s. Right before Salt and Pepper came out. That was the thing. People knew if they wanted to get their hair done and it looked like they came out of the salon, they would call me. I realized that this is something that I can make money from. It’s something that I can buy my own stuff. I don’t have to ask my parents. The entrepreneurship started at an early age as well. You take the things that you’re good at and you pair them together.
How did you transition from being good at doing hair in high school? How did you make the transition into technology?
That took a lot of standing, a lot of handwork. I knew that wasn’t something that I wanted to do, and I decided to move to Atlanta when I was seventeen. My father said, “We can get you a salon here in Griffin.” That’s just wasn’t what I didn’t want to do. Quite frankly, my cousin, who went to Clark Atlanta she became an executive for Friolet. I saw the benefits of sitting in the boardrooms and sitting in that executive suite. I said, “That is something that I think I really would like to do.” When I first moved to Atlanta, I started a little ice cream company called Cool Downs Italian Ice.
Wait a minute. Can we just go back just a little bit? You’re seventeen. You moved to Atlanta, and you decided to start an ice cream company.
I did.
I’m just imagining myself at seventeen, and I wouldn’t have been able to fathom how to do it, number one. Even I don’t, to be quite honest, didn’t have the confidence that I could be the person who could do that. Where did that come from?
I was working for, I forget the company that I was doing some temp work for. I met this guy from Philadelphia, and he told me that we were talking about shaved ice. To me, it was just icy. He said, “No, the term water ice came from Philadelphia and the way that we shaved ice.” At the time, I was going through a transition as a seventeen-year-old where I was looking at the things that I eat. I became a vegetarian. I was really into the foods that I ate, anything that I put into my body. I was really serious about that.
That was like early ‘90s, Atlanta. You’re in the South, and you’re talking about being a vegetarian. Where I’m from in LA, that makes sense. It must’ve been really difficult here in Atlanta.
That was tough. The first thing people think you’re losing your mind. I had read this book called book Back to Eden. Once I read it, and I understood the chemicals that we were putting into our bodies, not just the food, but how you take a bath, how you wash your face, the type of makeup, what are you using on your hair? I ended up locking my hair. I had locked.
That’s again, the early ‘90s.
This is like ‘92, ‘93. Yes. I had a roommate, and so that was good. Still, it was scary for my parents because here I am, seventeen, saying, “I’m out. I’m going on my own.” The Italian ice I had had a twist to it. I was like, “Instead of using the ingredients that they were using, which were based on sugar, what if I could take real fruit and blend these fruits and put them into the Italian ice, where it could be a little bit more chunkier and you can taste the flavors.” It was a totally different taste.
Like a smoothie, that’s a precursor to some smoothie is how I look at it.
It really was. I found out that you had to have a commissary. I found a little store that he was also working out of, and started going to the store and acquiring these little parts that you could take out to different places. Freaknik, I was there.
The rest is history.
The rest is history. I was shaving ice. I could literally go out to a Clark football game or a Morehouse football game and make rent that day. This was really great before I was doing really good at it. The rest is history on that. I ended up meeting my late husband, and I was telling him about how I saw technology was starting to transform. How people were using Word, PowerPoint, Excel, but it was so blacky. It just wasn’t what people know of today. I decided to go the, what we would call Unix Route. That’s a comparison to Microsoft Windows 11. I went the Unix Route.
Mastering Tech: From Unix To IBM And CNN
That would not have been revolutionary, but certainly going against the grain because I know about Microsoft. Tell us why you did that.
Money. I was a researcher. When I looked at the scale, first of all, it wasn’t that many women, and definitely weren’t that many Black women in the field. Unix is more of a terminal-type operating system where you would have to know command lines. It wasn’t the GUI interface that you know with Microsoft.
You’re speaking French.
Let’s make it so even a physician can understand this.
That is great. I’m glad you said that because that is important. Basically, in order to run these operating systems, you would have to know code. With Microsoft, you can just point and click. I want to point out that a GUI is a Graphical User Interface. When you first started using Windows, it was simple because you understood the icons. That wasn’t the case for Unix. You had to know how to move from one folder to the other one by putting in a command line. That was a whole lot difficult.
That also makes you, I don’t want to say more marketable, but it gives you additional skill sets.
It was a system that was a lot more stable because that system doesn’t have to be refreshed every time you run into a problem. You have to reboot and start services and things of that nature. Microsoft wasn’t my path, but it was his path. We met in the middle because you still had to understand technology. We were still able to meet in the middle. That was the start of my technology career.
You make this leap from side hustle to becoming known as the Olivia Pope of technology. Already, I can say I completely see you embodying Olivia Pope because, as Sylvia just said, “It sounds revolutionary.” That’s what I wrote on my paper. I mean, already doing things that are way outside the box for, say, a woman, for a woman of color, for a woman of color that’s so young. Tell us how you made the transition into where you are now.
After that transition, I was working for a company called Melitta International, and it was a predictive dialing system. Every time you get a call that you need to make a payment on something, this system is what is calling each person. I noticed that the men who were African-American dress really nicely, and they were really smart.
I found my way to sit beside them at every point. It was a curiosity that propelled me to ask so many questions. It was almost like, “I think you like us and that’s why you’re hanging around us.” I’m like, “No, I want to get to where you are. I want to understand these systems.” They said, “Really? Okay.” They put me all in. It was like, “Now it’s back to the computer that I took apart. It’s do or die. You learn it.” Mind you, I started off in college.
Where’d you go to college?
It was Perimeter, which is now Georgia state, but it was Perimeter. For some reason, I thought I wanted to be one of you guys. I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I was like, “I’m going in for pre-med.” I was like, “What do I want to do?” That’s too much school for me. I don’t want to do that, but I could learn stuff really fast. At that time, they had these books called Cram Sessions. You could pick whether it’s programming whether it’s cybersecurity. You can pick these series of books to learn. That’s what I did. I quickly moved up to my technical support engineer position, where I would take calls and help people with their issues.
Like the help desk.
After I left Melitta, I went to IBM. I was working with IBM for the same thing. There was an opportunity at CNN. I will never forget it because it was a week before September 11th. It’s almost like I went in as a contractor. On the day that I was just really working, September 11 happened, and that changed everything because they were like, “This is the day you’re going to learn today. Whatever you don’t know, that’s fine. Bring what you do know.”
Sometimes that’s hard when you’re moving in another direction. You’ve got to try to figure out what you don’t know. I think that it is important to understand what you don’t know. September 11th started, and CNN was not for the faint of heart. You had to know your stuff to get in and to stay in and then maintain it. It was a really good, really big family. Being at CNN, I learned a lot. I moved up fairly quickly.
It is important to understand what you don't know. Share on XWhere were you in IT at CNN? Were you working in broadcast?
I was in IT. There were two facets of it. There’s the media side and then there’s the IT. Believe it or not, we were hosting sites for people like Jeff Borden, the PGA, Cartoon Network, all of those industries. We were hosting their websites, and we were handling a lot of their backend. Most people don’t know that. As I said, I just asked so many questions.
It was curiosity. I was able to bounce around with the network engineers. I was able to bounce around with the web developers and even the executive staff, who would pretty much bring you along with them if you were interested enough. I had moved up to senior engineer. An opportunity came for the director of IT at Morehouse College. At the time I had a son, so I’m thinking, “This is great.”
He might be able to go to Morehouse when it comes time.
It was Morehouse. A lot of my family members went to Clark. It was just being a part of that family. This would have been great. I took the position as director of IT for Morehouse and loved it. I loved being around the students. It was a totally different outlook. It was a totally different vibe than what it was at CNN, where you had money to buy the technology that you needed. You’re coming into an organization where you don’t have just money to play with, and you have to be very strategic, and then want to have the technology that students need to progress.
Afrofuturism And AI Ethics: Redefining Technology’s Future
Let’s switch gears a little bit. I loved your bio because you talked about being a futurist. When I think about the tradition of Afrofuturism and music, I think of Eryka Badu and Nona Hendryx. When you think about literature, have Jamaica Kincaid. Can you talk about how you see yourself in the tradition of Afrofuturism?
I do see myself as a futurist. That’s because I’m motivated by curiosity and change. With future technology comes change. You have to be comfortable operating a few steps ahead because sometimes you’re going to fall short, but then you’re right on the money when you’re operating steps ahead. I will be honest and say, “I really didn’t pay attention to the word until you asked about it.” I said, “Wait a minute.” When I did my research, I didn’t know if I could actually say that I am an Afrofuturist, but I deeply respect the cultural lens.
With future technology comes change, and you have to be comfortable operating a few steps ahead, because sometimes you're going to fall short. Share on XCertainly are. You are a Black woman who was at the forefront of technology, and you are a trailblazer, so you are in that tradition, most definitely.
Sometimes we coin ourselves certain things. I do want to be cognizant of that. Also, it made me think back to the Jetsons. It made me think back to watching The Jetsons and my mother saying, “Pay attention, because this is going to happen one day.” She loves sci-fi movies.
Star Trek and Uhura.
The one thing that I did notice at an early age is that “We’re all black people? There are no black people on the wall.” I think it was, it spiked me at that one scene. It’s the same with that. I’m thinking, “Is that how they see the future without us?” Sylvia, I would agree with you in that regard. Now that I have understood the actual term and what it truly means, I can see myself operating in that space.
As you talk about the Jetsons, one of my favorites, but I have to say I definitely didn’t see beyond George and all the characters. I certainly see where my lane was more. I have to see it to believe it. Medicine versus your route and the curiosity in terms of technology and breaking things apart. Certainly, AI has turned the whole tech world on its head in that imagination portion of The Jetsons, never really, I didn’t imagine it, you probably did. I’m imagining you probably had some insight into AI coming about and how it’s just taken fire. What do you see on the horizon for technology now that we’re in this era, over the next few years, with AI?
The Evolution Of AI: Natural Language Processing And Agentic AI
AI is an old term. AI has been around since probably the late ‘60s or ‘70s. It’s been around, but just the access that regular people have wasn’t around until now, because now AI can understand what they call natural language processing. Now, back in the day, we had zeros and ones, but now you can actually speak to this particular platform.
When I say, “Alexa, please turn on Michael Jackson,” natural language?
Yes. The difference is that natural language, a couple of years ago, was based on a set of rules. You said if someone says this, then that. It was just a set of rules. Now, 2025 and on out, it’s more of an agentic. Meaning agentics AI is the ability to take the natural language, understand it, process it, and then go on to do other things outside of just the task that you have assigned it, and maybe possibly even create new things.
That’s a step further. It’s almost like you’re giving your assistant instructions, and your assistant will take the instructions and do exactly as you said. Now AI says, “I’m going to give you instructions.” You have a super assistant who’s going to say, “Did you think about this in the metaphor field?” We have to worry about identity and things of that nature. It can think more and bring you new things. I think two words on the horizon for IT are robotics and agentics, and the two will converge.
What do you say to those of us out here when we hear all of this and we’re not as adept as you are and are literally in some ways terrified of what could potentially happen with the trajectory, the way things are progressing?
We have to put the onus on people like me and the technologists to make sure that we have ethics and governance around this particular technology.
Can you please say that again? When I think about who is at the table making the rules or making the next AI technology, whether it’s a ChatGPT or I use a lot now Perplexity, how they build, I guess the rules or the systems, they don’t always include people who look like you and me. How do we make sure that the problems of the real world, racism, sexism, misogyny, classism, all those things are not then baked into this new technology?
Companies have to be aware of public AI and private AI. Those are two. It’s almost like back in the day when we were moving things to the cloud. Remember when you were moving things to the cloud, you could share space with people, or you could have a private cloud where you’re not sharing your data or space.
If it’s in the cloud, it’s already out there. Remember the breaches of the cloud and your pictures, not my pictures, but someone’s pictures showed up.
When we are building these models, or using the models, when I say models, I’m talking about chat perplexity, Gemini, all those things. That’s a large language model. We do have the ability to have smaller models based on your data, based on how you teach the model. You can use the technology of chat, but you still have to. I’m just going to go back to ethics.
Again, we have to push ethics committees. We have to look at like the World Economic Forum and get in touch with these officials to let them know. We’re still seeing where I just did a presentation for a conference I’m speaking at in November. I wanted to use AI to do this presentation so that I could show the ethics of the governance within it. When I did the presentation, it came back with boardroom pictures, because I’m talking to a set of CEOs and board members, and it came back with no African-Americans, any of the pictures.
I want to use that as an example to show some people probably think that, ethics-wise, we’re good, but we’re not. We still have to express to let them know the zirconbergs of the world and the ChatGPT, OpenAI. We will have to let them know we’re still seeing issues with ethics. Even in how we educate different classes, people, we have to make sure that the education is out there. Everything is still fairly new. If you really look at it, everything is fairly new. We still have to worry about privacy concerns and data concerns.
Cybersecurity In The AI Era: Staying Safe & Future-Proofing Careers
Going from the ethics and everything you’re speaking of and AI, you also focus on cybersecurity. How do you see those threats moving forward? I really, for the listeners and us, how can we stay safe online? Any general rules of thumb?
I think deep fakes are going to be the thing. People are going to make videos that look like you. Right now, there is sorrow that’s out there where you can create a video just off a prompt. I know it won’t allow you to use somebody else’s picture. I can guarantee you that within the next couple of weeks, somebody’s going to find a way around that.
Once it’s out there, couldn’t someone just then remove it and use it again once I release it?
Absolutely. I think that’s where policies. We have to have people in our Senate. Everybody on the government level, we have to get them involved to slow it down in a sense.
They have to understand it first, right? They’re like us. How do we educate? How does that happen? What’s the process in terms of educating the legislators?
That’s a fairly good question. That is something that I really don’t have a full answer to at this moment because of how fast and how rapidly it is happening. What I will say, even for individuals with a deep faith, they have a cold word for their family members. If someone calls and says, “Angela, we have Sylvia, we need a million dollars.” Sylvia just left your house. Let me call her, though. Let me call her to make sure that she really just left my house and nobody intercepted her on the way. Families have the code word. Also, social engineering is a big one, too. Social engineering is where it’s deep fakes would be included in social engineering, or sending you grants somewhere, or sending you emails that could possibly look real.
That’s where the verification goes in. I know it’s a nuance because everybody is busy. Sometimes you do have to take just one stop to really think, “Would someone in my staff send me something that says, I need fifteen gift cards?” It’s maybe your assistant. The assistant has to use curiosity again and think, “Would my leader send me an email and then go out and get fifteen gift cards?” I see that a lot. Even CFOs have done it.
We’re so busy now, and we’re so inundated by multiple email accounts, whether it’s work there’s a home email account. If you have some type of side hustle, it probably has an email account. If you are not vigilant, it is easy to fall prey to that. You’re on the other extreme, where I tend to be is that I’m deleting everything. I realize, “That was a real email. Let me go back and pull that out of the trash.” It can definitely be overwhelming. In general, going back to artificial intelligence or even social engineering, for that matter, how does that make our lives easier? Tell us about the good.
The positive.
The positive is just like a Brainchild. What we do is we work with organizations to look at their pain points. What is something that you do regularly that, if it were automated, would save you 3 or 4 hours a week? Some people probably think 3 to 4 hours a week. You’re thinking 3 or 4 hours a day. “I want 3 to 4 hours a day,” but 3 or 4 hours a week, that’s really a lot of time coming back.
Those repetitive tasks that you’re doing, because at some point, robotics and the agentics are going to converge, and businesses are going to start swinging to that anyway. I say the talk is that AI will take people’s jobs. There is some truth to that, but it’s no different than how the first and second industrial revolutions started. It’s the same thing. It will create jobs.
Future-Proofing Your Career: Skills For The Next Generation
What would you say to this generation of college students as they are entering, thinking about what they’d like to do in the future, whether it’s software engineering or whatever it is? What do you say to them on how to, in essence, predict where things are going to fall out, such that they are still marketable and have the skill sets for the next generation of jobs and employment?
That’s a good one because I have young adults now. The days of going to school, just becoming a programmer, are different. The schools will start to transition too. This younger generation has to understand electrical, plumbing, and construction work. Those are the things that are going to shift the industries. Some people would look at plumbers fifteen years ago and say, “It’s just a plumber.”
Do you know how much it costs to get a plumber to your house in a timely fashion?
Absolutely. Think about when you’re plumbing with AI.
That little camera thing that goes down the pipe.
It’s deeper than that. Even in the medical field, there are glasses out now that Georgia Power is using to a certain degree. Don’t quote me, but I think they are where the engineers could wear the glasses and then go out to a line. If they run into any problems, glasses can take a picture of whatever component they’re working on, send it back to a large language model like Perplexity, and it can analyze the problem and tell them how to fix it.
Even if you’re not an expert electrician, loan your license, and if you’re running into a problem, instead of the problem doesn’t pause, and then you have to wait for a supervisor or someone else. This is something that you could utilize that tell you what to do in the moment. That’s what I’m saying about pairing in for the younger generation. You have to figure out a way to use AI as a companion. Use it to learn things that you never thought you could learn, or maybe couldn’t even afford to go to college and learn.
For the younger generation, you have to figure out a way to use AI as a companion. Use it to learn things you never thought you could. Share on XThe DIY Bug: Housing, Redevelopment, And Hands-On Projects
Chandra, you brought up plumbing and electrical, so I’m going to shift to housing and redevelopment. I know that you have a DIY. Can you talk about how you got into DIY projects and your favorite projects so far?
Not only was I coined Olivia Pope of technology, but also the jack of all trades. Whenever somebody wanted, if they’re looking to fix something or do anything, whether it’s with a house, a car, or anything, somebody’s like, “Call Chan.”
You’re a tinkerer as well. You got it, honestly.
With my mom putting wallpaper up and doing things like that, I made my own clothes. Anything that was domestic innocence, I leaned into it. Getting into the DIY thing before it became a thing online, I quickly realized that plumbing and electrical work are expensive. Sometimes you’re in a position where, if it’s late at night and something breaks, you don’t really have time. I just did that. Let me go online and watch a video and see how to fix it.
That’s what really got me started. One too many things broke. Everyone wants the house until things break. I just started seeing a vision for how I wanted my house to be. I wasn’t scared to take down walls and things of that nature. My biggest project is my entire home. I’ve had to learn on the go. I’ve had to do the electrical lab, do the plumbing, and actually build out the walls. Thanks to YouTube and other people sharing their experiences, it helped me propel forward.
You clearly have an aptitude because there’d be no way in the world I could take down a wall and put it back up and not electrocute myself or flood my house. I think you are downplaying your skill sets.
I’m from Griffin. I’m not afraid to get dirty. That’s because I can do my own nails. I’ll do my nails in my hair later, but I’m not afraid to get dirty.
The Next Chapter: Tech-Driven Communities And Robotics
You were definitely, I would say, an oddity, and the best way that I could give you kudos because you’ve got this complete curiosity side, creative, but yet this extreme mastery of technology. Certainly a jack of all trades. I see that. I see that along those lines, with so much that’s at your fingertips and that you’ve already touched thus far in life. What do you see for yourself next, either personally or professionally, or both?
I will start with my next lifetime. My mother said, “You’re half of a hundred already.”
You have a whole other half. That’s how I look at it.
I’m excited about it because once you get to that point in life, you start the things that you cared about, or that was really my new you don’t care anymore, and it helps you overcome fear. My next goal is to become a full developer. I would love to develop an active senior community that is technology-driven to help with different elements.
Here?
Starting here, definitely, and then everywhere. Especially for our communities, even as I progressed and moved up as VP and all these things, I still stayed in my area with my people. I want to make sure that we start doing that and bringing back families, and looking at the tradition of the Asian communities and how they look at their elders and bring them back home. Just dealing with my own parents, I would love to build them, even if it’s a small one. My mother probably would hear this, and she’s going to be screaming because she sees the vision of having a tiny house with all the latest technologies and maybe even a little robot companion.
Does your mom see this? That’s wild.
Yes.
I love that.
I’m working on a prototype for a small robot that I’m building. Now I have to learn mechanical engineering to be able to build this robot the way I want it.
Do you have a name for the robot? You probably don’t want to tell us that. When you have the prototype done and you’re moving forward, please come back so that we can talk about the robot. I’m going to send you a list of names offline for your robot, but everything is in the name. I love it.
That would be great, actually.
We spend a lot of time talking about being caregivers, and you’re alluding to that. When we talk about aging in place and how our homes can assist or not assist us in aging in place, and then having a multi-generational home or community, so that we can all use technology for our benefit and for the betterment of the community. I am moved by that. That is fantastic.
I will also combine that with financial literacy. To get to that place, you still have to have, and just about building generational wealth. Those things that can give us the ability to acquire land, where we can build on our land. We can grow our own food and make our own medicines that is for our bodies, which is different. The first thing, though, is how do we situate our aging families and then also educate our younger generation on the financial front? Once that happens, everything else will fall into place.
Beautiful. I love all that you’re doing. With so much innovation and disruption, and with the good and the bad that we have in the world, and certainly what you have in your world is I just cannot even imagine. How do you stay grounded, and how do you care for yourself? What does your self-care regimen look like?
For me, health as well. As you can imagine, because the company is called Brain Child, my brain is very important to me. It’s the centralization of my entire nervous system, my entire body. I’m really cautious about how I feed my brain because everything else is going to come afterwards. The second portion is my body. I love to work out.
I understand now that the way I worked out in my twenties, which was a little bit of Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, things where you’re actually taking a beating. Your body can sustain that more before you start moving into the different phases, paramedic pause, and menopause. You have to change the way that you’re eating. You have to change the way that you’re exercising. I try to feed my brain by learning something every day. I don’t care how simple it is. It could be why the weather is in this state right now, and global warming and things of that nature, or it could be something as simple as something new to cook, but something.
The last and final thing is that I smile all the time. I try to find things to smile about, and I’m silly. If I stay silly and smile, that helps me through when times are tough. I’ve gone through several things. I’ve raised my children. My husband passed when my kids were three years old. I had no choice but to strap up my bootstraps and let’s get it. My health and my brain, and my sanity were most important. When things got tough, I just laughed about it because failure brings curiosity again. How do I get out of it? It keeps the brain going. That’s my thing.
I can relate. I loved what you said about silly because maybe it’s our community, but silly is thought of as like, I guess that you equate it to being childish or ignorant, but I find myself in that state. I laugh, I love to smile, and I feel like I can be silly. Sometimes the silliness comes out with my kids more than anything else, or with my girls, my girlfriends, but I love the image of just being able to smile and finding something to smile about. Certainly, those people who can laugh, there’s definitely medical evidence that suggests that they live longer and healthier lives. Good on you.
That’s good to know.
Absolutely, for sure.
See, I learned something.
There you go.
She’s smiling. You’re good for the day.
I think I have my whole week’s worth of learning something. I’ve got my notes and everything that we’ve taken. I’ve got my whole week’s worth of what I’ve learned for a week. Thank you so much.
Final Thoughts: Embracing Change and Ethical Tech
One more thing, Chandra Brubaker. What would you like to leave our audience with?
I would like to leave the audience with overcoming fear. I’m going to bring curiosity into that too, but overwhelming fear. When I was sitting as a vice president for a foundation, I knew this was a time. Sometimes when you have that feeling, you need to go with it. I was fearful. I realized after the first couple of weeks, “What am I scared of?” This is something that I’ve been doing. I’ve been taking risks. You have to take risks.
Where we are in this age of losing healthcare, losing technology positions that some people went to school for years to get, we have to use curiosity to pivot what we’re used to doing because technology is not going to be as slow as it was fifteen years ago. We can double that at this point. The more curiosity you have, I think the safer you will be. You just have to continue to learn. I don’t care how simple it is, but you have to continue to learn and have to have curiosity, and accept change.
We can complain about it all we want, but it won’t take us any further into the future unless we accept what’s happening. Add that ethical piece to it, as you say, but just know that we’re still moving forward. You’re either going to acknowledge it or get left behind. You have certainly given us enough information. I think that we can move forward in a positive direction from here. We’re so grateful for everything that you shared. Before we close out, can you tell us where people can find you?
Yes, definitely. I’m out on LinkedIn. You can always find me on LinkedIn, but I would love for people to visit the website, and it’s BrainChildIT.com. Go to the website, fill out the form. What I’m trying to do now is gather how many people are in that situation that you guys are in. Where do I start? Where do I go? This will help us be able to figure out just how many people out there need this type of help, so that we can start building learning platforms for people.
Based on how you learn. A friend of mine told me I was trying to tell her something, and she was like, “No. I don’t learn that way.” This is how I learned. It made me stop and think. We have to have so many different ways to teach people this technology. Come to the website and more to come. I will be getting back with you guys later on some other things that we’re working on, which cannot quite released right this moment.
We look forward to it. You have an open platform.
Open invitation.
Absolutely. BrainChildIT.com, everything that you mentioned will be in our show notes. We hope that people will take advantage of that. Again, we cannot thank you enough. Not only is my cup full, but the bowls and the pot on the stove, everything is just full of good stuff to dive into and take notes later or dive into my notes later. We thank you and appreciate your time. We know that our audience will absolutely appreciate everything that you have to share. Certainly, we’ll share this with their family members and friends, and family. Until we meet again, Chandra, may you be well.
Same to you. Thank you for having me. It’s a really good platform. I am so excited to see what’s next.
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Angela, that was an awesome conversation with Chandra Brubaker. When we talk about ice cream maker, Afrofuturism, DIY, IT entrepreneur, and soon-to-be developer, I was blown away. That was truly a delightful conversation. There were so many pearls and takeaways that I had. She talked about digging into curiosity, which I’m a huge fan of. One of my favorite phrases from her was, “I am very cautious about how I feed my brain.” She hit us with learning something every day. What did you take home from Chandra Brubaker?
Yes, I had so much that I took away. Actually, my list would be too long to add to this segment to make it too lengthy. Overall, my impression of the Olivia Pope technology, 100%. She’s a revolutionary visionary. It seemed like every topic that you could think of, she’s touched on it. Even with our conversation offline, I was, to say the least, super impressed. I just felt she was very authentic in what she had to bring and her intentionality about what she’s doing.
Some of the things that stuck with me, one of the phrases health is wealth. You cannot understand and understate that. Actually, that is forefront in my mind. I woke up this morning. I’m having some pain in my hip. As we get to this point in life, you get aches and pains here and there, but I’d never want something to limit what I’m able to do. I reminded myself of that notion of when something’s whispering, “Pay attention. Don’t put it aside,” because our health dictates how we move through this life and how we achieve our joy.
My joy is walking. I used to run, and I just had this vision of myself running. I’m thinking, “I’ve got that vision for some reason.” This is a long-winded answer to the health as wealth, but I need to figure out what’s going on and remedy the situation. Do I need to do whether it’s PT or whatever, because our health really does dictate how we experience the rest of our lives?
Two quick things, A, every doctor needs a doctor. You must be patient. I’m saying that for our audience because we have doctors. The other thing that is purely selfish is girl strip is coming up. I’m going to need you to get your hip together because we’re going to be moving. We do stuff on our girls’ strip. It is an active trip. Get your hip together.
I’m thinking about all that. Yes. Health is wealth. That stuck with me for personal reasons of feeding her brain, which is what you said, and learning something new every day. It’s so important. I feel like I tried to do that, and you just took the menopause certificate.
Do we have something to announce?
Yeah. Now, it’s the menopause society. I have the certification and did the test. When I was preparing for the test, I knew what I knew. Why am I doing more? It’s relevant and it’s important. I’m serving half of our population, women, and more of us are entering menopause and want to know as much as I possibly can and be of the best service, not only to myself selfishly, but to patients and women out there. That was part of learning every day.
We need more doctors who are certified in menopause so that we can continue to have the conversation, so that we can age with grace, and to live our best lives. Kudos to you. Congratulations.
Thank you. That was part of, “I’m doing this because I am still curious and I’m learning every day.” That was confirmation of that. The last thing she mentioned was overcoming fear. Being in that boardroom or in that meeting, when you have that gut feeling, you sometimes just have to take the risk.
I think that does come easier in this stage of life than it would have been at 20 years old or 30 years old, but I don’t think you can discount that when you have the fear, you cannot let fear dictate how you proceed through life. You can use that however you want. Again, I’ve got a laundry list of things that I’m going to write down and put in my journal for later.
We are very grateful for the experience, very grateful for Chandra and all that she had to offer. We will put all of her information in our show notes. We certainly feel like there’s probably something you took home that was valuable and certainly something that you could share with friends, family, or someone in your life who could definitely use some positive information here. We would love for you to like, follow, and share.
We’re on all streaming platforms. You can reach us at BossLeapPodcast.com. You can leave us a comment there, or if there’s something that you would like us to share, or even a podcast interviewee, we would love to have that. You can subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Boss Leap Podcast. I love for you to continue to follow and share with us on this journey. Sylvia, I am grateful to you as always.
I’m grateful for you.
Wonderful. Until we meet again.
May you be well.
Important Links
- Chandra Brubaker on LinkedIn
- Back to Eden
- Brainchild Technology
- Boss Leap Podcast
- Boss Leap Podcast on YouTube
About Chandra Brubaker
Founder & CEO, Brainchild Technologies
Chandra Brubaker is a 25-year technology executive turned entrepreneur and futurist. She is the Founder & CEO of Brainchild Technologies, an Atlanta-based technology firm helping organizations harness artificial intelligence, agentic systems, and digital strategy to work smarter and adapt faster in a quickly evolving world.
She first launched Brainchild in 2014, building it quietly alongside her executive career, what many would have called a “side hustle.” Over the years, Chandra earned a reputation as the Olivia Pope of technology—the expert called in to fix what others couldn’t and lead transformation at organizations including CNN, Atlanta Life Financial Group, WABE, Morehouse College, and the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.
Known for seeing the future of technology before most do, Chandra has always been drawn to the edge of innovation, where human intelligence meets machine autonomy. After decades of solving complex problems for major institutions, she realized it was time to invest that same energy in herself. If she could transform those organizations, she could build something extraordinary on her own terms. That conviction led her to fully relaunch Brainchild Technologies, bringing her futurist vision into focus.
At Brainchild Technologies, Chandra helps foundations, midsize companies, and entrepreneurs modernize through fractional CTO leadership, AI and agentic integration, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and CRM optimization. She’s also the creator of BrainLogix, an AI-powered CRM assistant that turns everyday conversations into actionable business intelligence.
Chandra speaks frequently about the next era of technology, where AI agents collaborate, roles evolve, and innovation reshapes how organizations create value.
When she’s not building the future of tech, Chandra is an avid DIY designer who has rebuilt her home from the ground up, including plumbing, electrical, and custom design work, and dreams of becoming a developer who integrates smart technology into homes for active adults over 50.