Detroit is Different

  • Latest episode: “One Opportunity to Make That First Impression: The Gospel of Hot Sam’s with Tony Stovall”
  • Latest episode: “When Organizers Step Into Office: Stephanie Chang on Legacy, Justice & Detroit’s Future”
  • Latest episode: “By Us, For Us, About Us, Near Us: Gary Anderson on Black Theatre in 2026”

  • Latest episode: “One Opportunity to Make That First Impression: The Gospel of Hot Sam’s with Tony Stovall”
  • Latest episode: “When Organizers Step Into Office: Stephanie Chang on Legacy, Justice & Detroit’s Future”
  • Latest episode: “By Us, For Us, About Us, Near Us: Gary Anderson on Black Theatre in 2026”

“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.