Hays W. "Skip" McCormick III
Read Skip's authors' note on how this site treats informal sharing versus unauthorized full-text hosts and resellers.
Skip is Founding CTO and AI Practice Lead at Cornerstone Technologies, where he builds enterprise-grade AI governance frameworks that optimize compliance, ethical integrity, and audit readiness while driving innovation, adoption, and measurable returns. With more than 20 years in data science, systems architecture, and public-sector transformation — including leadership roles at BNY Mellon and the U.S. Intelligence Community — he has helped organizations invent and deploy big data and AI solutions responsibly, reduce risk, and meet or exceed both legacy regulatory standards (e.g., Federal Reserve Supervisory Letter SR 11-7, GDPR) and emerging frameworks (e.g., the EU AI Act, America's AI Action Plan).
Through Cornerstone Technologies, Skip delivers managed services that make AI governance faster, scalable, measurable, and production-ready — with full lifecycle model risk management, compliance, monitoring, and ethical oversight. He is passionate about helping boards, regulators, and executive teams navigate the intersection of AI, policy, and technology, and is open to advisory roles, consulting engagements, and speaking opportunities in AI governance, risk, and compliance.
Earlier in his career, Skip was chief software architect and development lead for secure, web-based distributed collaboration systems at the MITRE Corporation, where he also ran MITRE's National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) Interoperable Technology Reification with Objects (NITRO) project and the Data Integration and Synergistic Collateral Usage Study (DISCUS) project. As an independent consultant he has worked with Litton/PRC, Northrop Grumman, The Harris Corp., The Discovery Channel, Satellite Services of America, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, SAIC, DARPA, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Interoperability Clearinghouse, and the Objective Technology Group.
Skip is co-author of AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures and Projects in Crisis, AntiPatterns and Patterns in Software Configuration Management, and AntiPatterns in Project Management, all published by J. S. Wiley, and has written for technical journals including Dr. Dobb's. He is a sought-after speaker, having given keynote addresses at the 3rd Annual European Conference on Java and Object Orientation in Denmark and the Visual Basic Insiders' Technical Summit (VBITS99) in Orlando.
Skip holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.
— Sweet Spot for refactoring AntiPatterns —
If the best you can do with the resources you've got is a crappy job, at least do that.