Get ready to be moved
Christopher brings a charged charisma that dynamically connects him with his audience, enabling his story to resonate with them on a personal level.
Relatable and approachable
With a genuine interest in the experiences and ideas of others, he constructs open spaces where people are comfortable and at ease being themselves.
Speaker for purpose
Whether you’re reinforcing existing corporate culture or wanting to make a change, Christopher delivers actionable messages to your group.
Get to know Christopher J Cost
Authentic and inclusive servant leader, transformational leader, team builder, entrepreneur, strategist, speaker, moderator, and coach: chaos organizer!
Christopher leads dynamic teams of technology and business professionals as founder and President of carpasean (an information systems outsourcer) and C Joseph Consulting (a business consultancy and advisory firm). An entrepreneur with a B.S. in Computer Science, Christopher’s three decades of business and technology experience spans state government, public and private businesses across numerous industries, technology firms, and non-profit organizations. He combines critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and people skills with expertise in business management, compliance and risk management, information systems, and technology strategy. He effectively identifies root causes and proper solutions through bringing individuals together as a team that functions as a cohesive and complementary unit.
A proudly out member of the LGBTQ community, same-sex partner to a Vietnamese immigrant, and brother and friend to persons with disabilities and special needs, Christopher has spent more than three decades in advocacy and activism. He drives awareness of gender and racial disparities, immigration issues, disability concerns, and other issues faced by marginalized groups and underserved communities. Christopher often does not align with traditional DEI initiatives, but he is always a champion for practicing compassion, tolerance, and respect for and towards everyone.
Thought Leadership We Need Now
Christopher is a storyteller that understands the current socioeconomic, national, geopolitical, and cyber challenges pressuring businesses and people. He develops content, messages, and experiences for each audience based on how these factors impact them as a whole businesses (or department) and each person as an individual. Christopher engaging and motivating experiences are filled with thought leadership from his core pillars described below.
3 pillars of thought 1 powerful storyteller
Authenticity
Whether the focus is on individuals, teams, or whole companies, authenticity is critical to building trust and respect within and without. Christopher has spent his life living his authentic self and brings that to his professional engagements as an example to others and to intentionally help people and businesses cast off external constraints holding them back from being their best true selves.
Leadership
Leadership is about being in service to others. It’s demonstrating a positive and uplifting approach through every action and interaction. Leading with emotional intelligence is about asserting authority at the right time and in the right way and knowing when to allow others to shine. Leading with empathy is allowing your followers to lead you to what they need and working to understand them and that need.
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is one of the most difficult businesses challenges because success is tightly coupled to how people think and behave to security tools, compliance requirements, and evolving threats. In response to the common chaos, Christopher blends cybersecurity expertise with his leadership to develop tailored approaches that foster team building and adoption across business units, departments, and whole companies.
Key Speaking Topics
Speaking is more than standing on a stage to impress people. The audience deserves more, and the organizer expects more. The best speakers are storytellers that share a relatable narrative. Each speech Christopher delivers is a living story drawn from his own experiences that includes humor, metaphor, and audience interaction that keeps everyone present and involved.
Each event he leads is an interactive and inclusive engagement directly with the participants whether its leading a small team meeting, moderating a panel, running a workshop, or delivering a speech. Christopher is currently offering the following topics and is available to discuss a fully customized topic and message for your group.THE CHAOS ORGANIZER
Chaos is the enemy of smooth! Business exist to deliver solutions and services. Too much focus on the wrong thing and too little leadership can churn disorder. Drive operational excellence with new habits and by rehoning leadership focus.
Suited to conference keynote, breakout session, panel, and workshop.
AUTHENTIC SELF
Christopher’s favorite story to tell! He focuses the attendees’ attention on their self-worth, knowing who they are, discovering who they want to be, and inspires them to always strive to become the best version of their true selves.
Suited for commencement address, conference keynote, or corporate/team retreat.
Privacy by Design for ISVs: Managing Privacy Reqs Across Customer Projects
Whether you’re developing a fully custom solution for a single customer or multi-tenant SaaS systems, modern business is faced with legal requirements to maintain data privacy. This topic covers how development teams and project managers can identify, catalog, and address competing or colliding requirements.
Suited for panel, breakout session, workshop, and development/project team retreat.
Explaining Risk and Governance to SMBs… and, getting through
SMB owners are SMEs, and that usually isn’t on compliance, risk, and governance. Bringing risk and governance into the understanding of the SMB owner can be a daunting challenge. However, there are specific methods that can be used to break through these barriers.
Suited for panel, breakout session, workshop, and chamber/bussiness group events.
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE DEFINES THE CUSTOMER AND PARTNER EXPERIENCE
People must be primary! Business binds us together and technology is just a tool. Why are people resources not always the first thing when making business decisions? Employee experience creates the customer/partner experience.
Suited for conference keynote, breakout session, workshop, and executive briefings.
DIVERSITY-FIRST HASN’T DONE ENOUGH… It’s time to think differently!
There’s a slippery slope to DEI! We’re all different in some way. The reactions to those differences—whether subtle or drastic—tend to divide us. For decades, DEI hasn’t done enough. A new strategy with fresh and effective tactics is needed.
Suited for conference keynote, panel, breakout session, workshop, and corporate/team retreat.
Business Consulting and Advisory Services
C Joseph Consulting
Focusing its attention on technology, security, data, privacy, and GRC firms, C Joseph Consulting brings special offerings to help these problem solvers and B2B service providers exploit their full potential.
Some services are designed to help clients run their own businesses to drive operational excellence. Other services are intended to be incorporated into their customer facing offerings to better align with the nuances of each customer and deliver superior customer experiences. All services are based on a vCIO model that is complemented by privacy expertise, compliance experience, business analysis, and relationship management.ISV
C Joseph Consulting helps software companies overcome internal and external challenges related to solutions correctly aligning and adjusting to target customer business needs, providing Privacy by Design consulting, among others.
MSP, MSSP, SI
Service providers based in technology don’t always have the specific business acumen needed for every customer or situation. The C Joseph Consulting team helps the teams run their internal business and ensure they understand the nuances of their customers’s businesses.
Non-tech Security and Privacy
Data security and privacy firms that provide subject matter expertise but do not deliver technology solutions can benefit from C Joseph Consulting’s vCIO, business analysis, and relationship management, among others.
GRC
Governance, risk, and compliance firms have the challenge of helping niche-thinking business owners and executive leadership understand the concept of risk. C Joseph Consulting’s key assistance to these firms is building a bridge between the differeing mindsets.
Information Systems Outsourcing
carpasean
Serving medium-sized businesses and mid-market companies, Christopher’s leadership at carpasean helps business grow their technology maturity through an outsourcing arrangement specifically intended to end with them outgrowing carpasean.
The IS Outsourcing teams are made up of CIO, CTO, IS Director, IT Manager, Project Manager, and other complementary roles and skills that can either fully satify the client’s needs or augment and manage existing internal and external staff, partners, and vendors.Fractional CIO and CTO
The healthiest technology stacks are based on a sound business strategy that ensures business needs are being met by the technology. carpasean’s solutions have C-Suite leadership that focus on business and technology as collaborative expertise.
IS Director & IT Manager
Information systems has an inherit expectation of business-aligned strategy (a concept) while information technology is about taking that business need to design, implement, and manage a technology asset (context).
Project Manager
Formal project management— whether agile, waterfall, or hybrid—is an integral element of the carpasean methodology. Using seasoned project managers with relationship management experience is an invaluable aspect of carpasean’s success helping clients to outgrow them.
Complementary Roles
Based on the existing internal and external technology staff and resources, carpasean’s IS Outsourcing can bring in additional skilled, professional, and internship resources on permanent, temporary, or seasonal basis to meet the unique needs of each client.
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