Micheal Cudgel
Founder, Columbus Executive
At a Glance
Micheal Cudgel has spent 18 years helping organizations across Central Ohio lead with clarity, operate with integrity, and grow with purpose. A fractional technology executive, entrepreneur, and master's student in theology and divinity, Micheal founded Columbus Executive on a simple belief: leaders who know each other personally solve harder problems faster.
Introduction
The Builder Behind the Table
If you sat across from Micheal Cudgel at dinner, you would not hear a pitch. You would hear a question — about your work, your city, your convictions. That is how he leads. Micheal has spent nearly two decades in Central Ohio building technology practices, advising executives, and quietly strengthening the institutions that hold communities together.
He has served as a fractional CTO for organizations navigating digital transformation, advised nonprofit boards through seasons of growth and uncertainty, and mentored emerging leaders across both public and private sectors. Through it all, one pattern became unmistakable: the leaders who accomplished the most were the ones who knew each other best. Columbus Executive is the formalization of that observation — and the community Micheal has spent his career preparing to build.
Full Biography
Eighteen Years in Service to Columbus
Micheal Cudgel arrived in Central Ohio with a conviction that technology, when deployed with integrity, could transform how institutions serve people. Over the next eighteen years, that conviction shaped everything he built. As the founder and managing partner of HAZ Technologies, LLC, Micheal has served as a fractional technology executive for organizations across healthcare, government, education, and the private sector — helping leaders modernize operations, secure critical infrastructure, and align technology strategy with organizational purpose.
Beyond the enterprise, Micheal's leadership extends into the nonprofit and civic fabric of Columbus. He has served on boards, advised community organizations, and consistently invested in the leaders around him — not as a strategist observing from the outside, but as a partner carrying weight alongside them. His approach to leadership is shaped by a deep theological formation: currently pursuing a master's degree in theology and divinity, Micheal brings a framework of service, humility, and long-term stewardship to everything he does.
Columbus Executive grew from a pattern Micheal witnessed repeatedly over eighteen years: the city's most effective collaborations always began with personal trust between leaders. Not memoranda of understanding. Not strategic frameworks. Trust. Built slowly, in small rooms, between people who chose to know each other beyond their titles. Micheal founded Columbus Executive to make those rooms permanent — to give Columbus a dedicated, career-long home for the relationships that turn a great city into an extraordinary one. He leads with the belief that if you build the trust first, everything else follows.
"Leaders who know each other personally solve harder problems faster. Columbus Executive is built on that belief."
— Micheal Cudgel, Founder