Person: ChaChi Gallo

ChaChi Gallo is Vice President of Information Technology at Michels Corporation, a Wisconsin-based infrastructure contractor specializing in horizontal construction — the foundational work that precedes buildings: fiber, gas lines, power lines, road construction, and the underground infrastructure that connects communities to energy and data. Michels is currently supporting major data center projects for organizations including Google, Oracle, and OpenAI.

ChaChi built his career without a traditional degree, advancing from help desk roles through hands-on technical work in web development, network infrastructure, and cybersecurity. His defining years came leading IT for a managed services organization that hosted SAP ERP environments in the private cloud for global enterprise customers, where he developed fluency in compliance, business continuity, and large-scale systems. He later joined Generac, where he led a complex multi-cloud and on-premise infrastructure strategy during a period of rapid mergers and acquisitions.

At Michels, he leads IT strategy with a focus on operational alignment, building what he calls a ‘digital job site’ — a disciplined approach to connectivity, data foundation, and AI readiness that reflects the way construction itself gets built: with permits, checks, and sequenced execution. His perspective draws equally from infrastructure engineering and the hard-won understanding that technology transformation depends on relationships, not just systems.

ChaChi’s core argument is that AI readiness is a construction project: foundation first, tools second. Organizations that skip the data foundation step are building on unstable ground, and the 60 to 70 percent AI deployment failure rate reflects exactly that.

ChaChi Gallo joins Go Beyond the Connection to discuss what it takes to build a digital job site and why most organizations get the sequence wrong.