About

Who I am

I'm from New England, with a Nordic thread running through my family and my interests. They are two high-latitude, forested, maritime places wrestling with the same questions about energy, resilience, and how to keep people connected over long distances in sparsely settled places.

I love collecting ideas the way some people collect old issues of National Geographic. I sometimes feel like I'm in a state of perpetual preparation: one more book or article and then I'll be able to act. But I want to break that cycle and contribute my own ideas back. I won't get feedback on them, or find people to build with, unless I'm writing as much as I'm consuming. This site is my attempt to move from collecting to contributing.

Who I write for

I write for people with real responsibility who privately suspect they're still beginners. The director whose domain expertise got her the seat, but who now fields questions about AI she can't confidently answer. The official who signs off on infrastructure he won't live to see finished. If you've ever sat in a meeting nodding at a term you couldn't define, this site is for you, and I'd rather you nod with confidence next time.

What I actually do

My work has always been translation. As a healthcare IT consultant, I helped people adopt systems they didn't ask for. In technology sales and enablement, I made complex things easy to connect with. Now I work where emerging technologies like AI, quantum computing, and advanced energy systems meet governments and the institutions that keep societies running. I take what's being invented and make it usable by the people who have to decide things.

The through-line I care about most: energy and compute are the two great levers of this century, and the hardest work ahead is designing the operating system of institutions, standards, and decisions that makes these systems run.

This year IBM is loaning me out to the National Defense University, where I'll study industrial mobilization, supply chains, and how institutions hold up under strain. I'll have the least military experience in most of those rooms, which is most of why I'm going.

Reach me

The best way is email: harry@harrymunroe.com. I read everything and answer most of it. I'm also on LinkedIn.

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies, or opinions of IBM, the National Defense University, or the U.S. government.