Detroit is Different

  • Latest episode: “Fair Share, Real Power: Detroiters, Development, and the Future of Justice with Theo Pride”
  • Latest episode: “From Joy Road Roots to WDET’s “The Metro” with Tia Graham”
  • Latest episode: “Five Generations, One Mission: Renette Jackson on Law, Motherhood, and Black Detroit’s Future”

  • Latest episode: “Fair Share, Real Power: Detroiters, Development, and the Future of Justice with Theo Pride”
  • Latest episode: “From Joy Road Roots to WDET’s “The Metro” with Tia Graham”
  • Latest episode: “Five Generations, One Mission: Renette Jackson on Law, Motherhood, and Black Detroit’s Future”

“My grandmother taught me how to program when I was seven,” Bryan Campbell shares, setting the tone for a story that stretches from East Side Detroit roots to Silicon Valley boardrooms. In this powerful Detroit is Different interview, Bryan opens up about hacking school systems as a teenager, building websites for Michigan State before they even knew what email was, and becoming a key engineer behind ad systems that generated billions at Google. With family ties to tech pioneers and civil rights activism, Bryan’s journey includes personal battles—divorce, depression, and alcohol abuse—during his tenure at tech giants like Google and Amazon. Yet his story transforms when he returns to Detroit and builds his own firm, Pec Tech, from the ground up. “I didn’t walk away from Amazon; I walked toward healing,” Bryan says, reflecting on faith, failure, and finding purpose beyond corporate success.