COMMUNITY

Personal code: Boyd Stephens connects Montgomery to its future

Brad Harper
Montgomery Advertiser

The city hums with his influence, just out of sight.

Teens in a cash-strapped public high school still have a technology program. More local artists are finding a voice and a platform. Federal prisoners are finding faith and meaning. Former panhandlers on the streets of downtown are getting business licenses and leading tours.

Local entrepreneur Boyd Stephens works with computer students at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday October 4, 2019.

Over the years, his lessons have helped hundreds of locals climb the corporate ladder, launch their own companies, or even solve problems in the community. A new Air Force innovation center found its footing through him. Even Montgomery’s city government runs more efficiently — and more openly — after embracing a digital push he championed.

Like the computer networks he manages, Boyd Stephens seems to be everywhere and nowhere. Today he's eyes behind a laptop, classical jazz pouring through headphones, hands dancing from code to email as he describes the scene from a downtown cafe. “Superly cool.”

He’s the founder of Netelysis, a regional IT company, but that’s not what it says on his email. His sign-off is “Boyd Stephens, community steward.”

21 Dreams founder Kalonji Gilchrist talks about art projects in Montgomery as he stands in front of the Nat King Cole mural in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday September 26, 2019.

The email goes out to a downtown area now covered by a free public WiFi network, along a stretch of new technology from a 100-gigabyte internet exchange on Dexter Avenue to the MGMWerx tech hub on Commerce Street. Stephens, the Montgomery Advertiser's October Community Hero, wasn’t the main person behind any of that, or the other “superly cool” things blossoming around him.

But his name always comes up.

Lora McClendon kept hearing the name when she got involved with the tech scene as part of her job with the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce, years before the Chamber rolled out free WiFi. So, she took one of his free lean startup classes.

So did TechMGM Executive Director Charisse Stokes and other key figures in the tech scene. So did everyone from state workers to artists, each taking away something different.

Charisse Stokes, Executive director of TechMGM, talks about working with Boyd Stephens in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday September 26, 2019.

Kevin King took the classes multiple times before founding The King’s Canvas. Kalonji Gilchrist founded local artists collective 21 Dreams using the lessons he learned from the class.

“In my living room, we whiteboarded it out. I went out and did the exercises. Where are the gaps? Where are the needs in the arts community? How is 21 Dreams different from the other organizations?” Gilchrist said. “We saw our unique value proposition. It all made sense.”

More than 250 people have come through those classes so far.

Eric Sloan already had his own successful company but sat in on one of the classes anyway — he knew Stephens was worth it. Sloan is the CEO of local cloud computing company 1 Sync Technologies, and he first worked with Stephens in 2005 to train and grow the IT workforce here.

“A number of (those students) now have their own businesses or they’re in senior leadership, whether it be in the government or their own organization,” Sloan said.

Stephens insists that none of his classes were free. He expects a return on his investment, and he still tracks the success of each student.

“He understands the big picture,” Sloan said. “… If you can build with someone, and build with a community and an ecosystem, then as I grow, everybody else is able to grow as well. As they grow, that benefits me.”

A crowd of software developers plug away on projects at a coding event.

Stephens stands at the back of the room, behind a sweater vest and a smile. He put this together, working with connections at Intel, Dell and event sponsor Red Hat, and linking them all to the city’s military and tech community.

Then he stood aside.

These kinds of events used to happen at his co-working space across the street, CoWerx46. It closed its doors — but not before it incubated a nonprofit called MGMWerx that collaborates with the private sector to help the Air Force. Now, MGMWerx has its own modern facility on Commerce Street where it regularly hosts tech events as part of a wider mission of solving military problems, from gamifying space training to finding smarter manufacturing solutions.

MGMWerx Director Steve Werner quickly came to rely on Stephens to make the right connections and keep things growing. That continued through the coding sprint at this year’s sprawling Air Force Information Technology & Cyberpower conference, where Stephens brought in talent and even served as a co-sponsor.

“I’m convinced he has no personal ambition, really,” Werner said. “He wants to see the city of Montgomery succeed. He wants industry to come to town so that this city grows and becomes more economically viable, and that we join the 21st century.”

Years ago, he gave Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange a copy of the book “Citizenville” and a pitch for how governments could function better with a digital focus. Strange read it, then gave a copy to each of his cabinet members. It all accelerated a push toward “smart city” government that had been brewing in Montgomery.

Now, everything from city salaries to crime data is publicly available online, and Montgomery is winning national acclaim for its tech-focused efficiency initiatives, like a street paving program guided by artificial intelligence.

Adrienne Greenberg of Socrata talks to Boyd Stephens about the launch of a Montgomery open data portal in 2016.

“He’s been a driving force for us as a (smart city),” Strange said. “And, frankly, he was doing it before it was cool.”

McClendon and Stokes, two of the leaders of downtown’s tech scene, said Stephens has personally helped them both, along with many others. “His talents really shine through in working directly together with someone who is trying to create something, or build something, or learn something. He is a teacher at heart,” McClendon said.

Local entrepreneur Boyd Stephens works with computer students at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday October 4, 2019.

A group of high school freshmen hang on his words as Stephens holds up a cellphone.

“This is not magic,” he tells them. “We let everybody else think it’s magic. We learn how it works.”

Stephens speaks at a lot of local schools and does a lot of one-on-one mentoring, and he doesn't sugarcoat anything for teens. He got the attention of a crowd at Robert E. Lee High School when he explained to them how their test scores affect accreditation, which affect whether businesses come to town, which affect whether their parents have jobs. "We need to tell these kids the truth," he said.

At Sidney Lanier High School, he called up the city’s open data portal to show the mayor’s salary to a crowd of students, then encouraged them to call it up on their own devices. “You know he works for you,” Stephens said. “This is your city.”

Today he's starting what he calls “a new relationship.”

Booker T. Washington Magnet High Principal Quesha Starks found out that she lost the teachers for her school’s technology program to budget cuts. That was going to leave a group of incoming freshmen with no tract at BTW.

Local entrepreneur Boyd Stephens, left, and Booker T. Washington Magnet School Principal Quesha Starks, right, talk with computer students at the school in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday October 4, 2019.

“The first person I contacted was Boyd Stephens, and he just renewed in me an energy not to give up,” Starks said. “He said, ‘If you cut these children out of their program, then you may also be cutting out the potential that could make Montgomery better, Alabama better, and our nation… because of the gifts that they have.’

“I’m so happy that I didn’t give up on the children just because of funding. They have been amazing.”

In fact, when one of the school computers had a problem and a staff member couldn’t help, the kids stepped in and fixed it.

Stephens, who’s acting as an unpaid adviser, told the students that story illustrates one of the best things about the tech world. “That computer doesn’t care if you have an MIT degree or no degree at all. All that matters is if you can make it work.”

Local entrepreneur Boyd Stephens works with computer students at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School in Montgomery, Ala., on Friday October 4, 2019.

That’s the philosophy on which Stephens built his own business. Working as a cog in larger companies at the dawn of corporate networking, he saw the need and the chance to create something cost-efficient that would allow local companies exchange data between sites. Using lessons learned from studying the Austin-area’s lean startup formula, he took the plunge.

Now, Netelysis connects sites for businesses across the Southeast, almost all of them small companies.

“There’s nothing magical about it. It’s some software running on a processor with some memory, and storage, and interfaces,” he said. “My wife says I like to be creative with constraints. I like that model.”

Boyd and Brenda Stephens don’t have a child. They have a lot of them.

The couple helps with a big church family at Montgomery First Seventh Day Adventist Church and has helped raise a bushel of nephews. He jokes that they usually get them when they’re “going south.” Three more nephews came along last year.

Brenda Stephens said her husband has always been willing to do whatever it takes to help children, even when that meant taking on more family members for a while. “In some relationships, that could put a strain on you,” she said. “He is a giver. I swear he is. He is so loving.”

A pastor once recruited Boyd Stephens to help minister to federal prisoners once every two weeks. The pastor quickly moved on, and Stephens took over the ministry. Now he visits the prisoners twice a week.

He takes the same direct approach with them that he does with students.

“Some of the most intelligent people in the world are incarcerated,” he said. “You’re not going to come and shuck and jive. … They want to know where you get that from. It’s almost like community building, for me.

“When I started doing prison ministry, it really wasn’t about the inmates. It really changed me.”

His wife concedes it can be hard for the two of them to find time together. She’s worked around that by getting involved in what he’s doing, whether it’s church outreach or something else.

When that doesn’t work, she tries a little understanding.

“He’s God’s gift to me, but God didn’t just give him to me,” she said.

Boyd Stephens knows most of the downtown panhandlers by name. He’s seen some of them for years, and he knows how they get by.

One collects and sells scrap. He has a phone but no cell service. Stephens connected him to the new downtown WiFi and showed him the city’s open data portal, where he can find a list of demolition projects and a contact number for a person who will probably need help hauling scrap away from each site.

Boyd Stephens speaks during a start up entrepreneurship class at the Kress Building in Montgomery, Ala., on Monday, June 24, 2019.

The guy disappeared from the streets.

He showed others how to get a business license a few blocks away and talked to them about leading tours of the historic sites they walk every day to make some cash. When one was having trouble attracting customers, he started working on ideas to get things going. “If you’re going to work the business, be serious about working the business,” Stephens said.

"My No. 1 objective has always been to democratize this stuff."

Even in her short time working with Stephens, Starks said she can tell he has a gift for connecting with students. But there hasn’t been any discussion of pay for what he does at the high school.

“Even if he could get paid, he wouldn’t take it,” she said.

He stayed longer than he planned at the last visit to BTW. But he also warned the students that they’ll each have to give him a sign of progress in their core subjects when he comes back.

He plans to quiz them. He expects results.

“Promise me,” he says with a stern look. “I’ve got to get something out of the deal.”

Community Heroes Montgomery

The 12-month Community Heroes Montgomery, sponsored by Beasley Allen Law Firm, will profile one person every month this year.

Every monthly winner will receive a travel voucher from the Montgomery Regional Airport and American Airlines, a staycation from Wind Creek, dinner at Itta Bena restaurant and a certificate of appreciation from Montgomery's mayor.

At the end of the 12 months, the Heroes will be recognized at a banquet, and a "Hero of 2019" will be honored.

The 12 categories the Montgomery Advertiser will focus on: educator, health, business leader, military, youth, law enforcement, fire/EMT, nonprofit/community service, religious leader, senior volunteer, entertainment (arts/music) and athletics (such as a coach).

Do you know a Community Hero?

To nominate someone for Community Heroes Montgomery, email communityheroes@gannett.com. Please specify which category you are nominating for and your contact information.

January: MadHouse making a difference one life at a time

February: Ken Austin has never met a person he wouldn't help

March: Jarvis Provitt rallies young volunteers to help Montgomery

April: At Dream Court, there’s will and Weyreuter

May: Shakita Brooks Jones helps through love and acceptance

June: Bryan Kelly puts faith in leaders of the future

July: Rhonda Thompson puts hope and faith in Chisholm

August: Step by step, Kitty Seale has led young dancers to life success

September: Childhood idols and family helped create Phillip Ensler

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brad Harper at bharper1@gannett.com.