M. Shad Collins
Enterprise Growth Architect | CIO

When Your Business Is Ready to Scale, I Make Sure It Can.

For nearly four decades, Shad Collins has worked at the intersection of strategy, process, technology, and operations, helping CEOs, senior leadership teams, and private equity firms turn operational complexity into competitive advantage. His focus is integration: aligning people, process, technology, and data into coherent systems that scale reliably and deliver the outcomes the business is actually trying to achieve.

His career began early. At fifteen, he launched his first company building computers and technology solutions for small businesses. That early obsession with how things connect, systems, people, and results, became the foundation of a lifelong focus on integration and outcomes.

Shad built his technical foundation at Digital Equipment Corporation, Midstate Mills, and BellSouth, where he learned enterprise-scale design and led large, cross-functional deployments. His work for companies including Procter & Gamble, Fidelity, Whirlpool, and Florida Power & Light established him as a leader who could translate technical complexity into business clarity at Fortune 100 scale.

As a Vice President, corporate officer, and head of Process Improvement and Information Management at Bojangles’ Restaurants, Shad played a central role in the company’s transformation from a regional chain into a national brand with 650+ locations and 19,000+ annual employees. He led enterprise-wide POS modernization, proprietary ERP development, data warehousing, and business intelligence initiatives. His teams consistently exceeded Tier 1 audit and PCI-DSS standards, and the operating infrastructure he built supported the company’s successful $710M IPO in 2015.

Shad founded Digital Alchemy Solutions, providing integration and modernization services for mid-market organizations across insurance, restaurants, manufacturing, and municipal government. He subsequently served as Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, and corporate officer at Frederick Mutual Insurance Company, where he led the company’s expansion from 2 to 5 states, launched new product lines, and drove significant revenue growth, all while modernizing the full technology stack and substantially reducing IT spend.

Shad most recently served as Vice President of Information Management at Meridian, a nationwide services organization operating across all 50 states and serving Fortune 100 clients. As a member of the executive leadership team, his scope extended well beyond technology, encompassing Enterprise Capabilities, Transformation, Quality Assurance, and Custom Equipment Manufacturing and Logistics. He was brought in to assess, re-architect, and rebuild the company’s enterprise capabilities and technology foundation, establishing the operating systems needed to support reliable execution and sustainable growth at scale. Meridian was acquired by Ecolab in 2026.

Shad works directly with CEOs, senior leadership teams, and private equity firms as an Enterprise Growth Architect, brought in when the gap between strategy and execution is costing the business. He assesses where the real friction is, builds the operating architecture to remove it, and stays until the system holds. His clients get clarity, traction, and the processes and infrastructure that perform at scale.