Overview
Robby Prochnow is a technology executive with 12.5 years in Fortune 500 technology businesses. At Common Ground he is CTO and the Technology & AI Architecture principal, responsible for the intelligence pillar: the AI and agentic systems that run inside the group and across its portfolio.
Prochnow is the founder of Zen Aegis, an AI transformation and intelligent automation firm. Zen Aegis builds custom intelligence infrastructure for enterprises and stays for deployment and ongoing operations rather than one-time consulting; its stated model is to build and operate inside the client organization until the results are real. The firm works with growth-stage companies, private equity portfolio operators, regulated industries, and mission-driven organizations.
Within Common Ground, the same systems Zen Aegis deploys for clients run first inside the group’s own ventures, consistent with the group’s standing claim that everything it sells, it has implemented.
Career, from his own account
Recorded September 28, 2026, from his own history and credentials record; clients are described by role, never by name.
Robby Prochnow spent 12.5 years running technology businesses inside Fortune 500 companies. Insight and TD SYNNEX are a reseller and a distributor, and Avnet is a distributor: he owned the Apple, Microsoft and Dell businesses inside those companies, and did not work for Apple, Microsoft or Dell.
At Insight Enterprises in Tempe, from 2013 to 2019, he built a $10M-plus small-business book from scratch as a field account executive, beat quota growth by 200% as the Western Region business development manager for Apple, and then ran product management for the Microsoft business, growing Surface, software and services 40% year over year and moving from fourth to second in market share. He was the first to architect Device as a Service and take it to market, when nobody else was selling it: the first client proof of concept was with a large college in Kansas, he raised about $1M from technology partners to fund the launch, and it scaled nationwide and then globally. He also won an exclusive channel partner deal for Microsoft HoloLens and founded a Mixed Reality team.
As general manager of GoDaddy’s cyber security business in Scottsdale, from 2019 to 2021, he inherited a flagship product declining 60% year over year, stopped the decline in the first year and turned the portfolio to 12% growth. He redesigned the security portfolio so small businesses could buy real security instead of bolt-ons, and launched Website Security Suites.
At TD SYNNEX in Phoenix, from 2021 to 2022, he ran the North America Microsoft devices, software and services business on a $1B P&L. He inherited it down to two people and a new hire, rebuilt the team, took it from the lowest-ranked distributor to the highest, and moved $20M of eight-month-aged inventory in three months. Microsoft named him Transformation Partner of the Year at Microsoft Inspire in 2021 for that business. After the Tech Data merger he was asked to lead the global Microsoft business and bring the two companies and cultures together.
At Avnet in Chandler, from 2022 to 2025, he led the global Dell partnership, centered on OEM solution design, doubled the business outside North America and took to market some of the first AI solution packages built to run on Dell servers. He then worked across about 50 suppliers on AI acceleration and cut supplier onboarding time in half.
He founded Zen Aegis in Phoenix in 2023. It began as a consulting business, became a fractional leadership firm, and is now an AI transformation partner that builds and operates custom AI agent systems inside client businesses, on the same agent infrastructure it runs itself. He has run at least 70 audits as Zen Aegis and hundreds across his career, mostly technology, plus sales, marketing, operations, and leadership and culture.
Before 2013 he worked at Wells Fargo, from teller to service manager, and at Sprint. In college he bought, repaired and resold broken computers, and ran a painting company for a summer through a College Works Painting internship: about $100K in revenue and the award for the most profitable painting business. He holds an MBA from Grand Canyon University and a BA in Business Legal Studies from Arizona State University. His certifications: Stack AI, Microsoft AI, n8n, and Assembly (formerly Copilot) Premium Expert; he is also in the top 10% of Replit Agent users.
At a glance
| Role at Common Ground | CTO · Technology & AI Architecture |
|---|---|
| Firm | Zen Aegis |
| Background | 12.5 years in Fortune 500 technology businesses |
| Website | zenaegis.com |
| linkedin.com/in/robby-prochnow |