Brayden Callahan

I'm a high school senior graduating in the class of 2026. This fall I'm headed to Bryant Universityin Smithfield, Rhode Island — a Finance major with a minor in Applied Artificial Intelligence. I picked that combination on purpose. Finance gives me the vocabulary of the small businesses I want to serve. Applied AI gives me the toolkit to automate the parts of their books that shouldn't need a human in the first place.

Before any of this was a company, I learned accounting and financial analysis the way most people in my generation do — through classroom courses and through DECA, the international business-and-entrepreneurship organization for students. DECA is where I first put accounting concepts against real case studies under time pressure, pitched ideas to judges, and learned that a good answer is usually a simple one.

When my parents started their business in 2025, their books were the one thing nobody had time for. I took it on. I earned my QuickBooks ProAdvisor Level 2certification, set up their books from scratch, and kept them current through every month-end. When my sister started her own business a few months later, I was keeping two sets of books by hand. Both families had accurate P&Ls at the end of every month. Neither had to hire a bookkeeper.

Clarity Books AI is what I wish I'd had in my second month of doing this — a tool that does the mechanical work quickly and correctly, and only asks for human judgment when human judgment is actually the right answer. It's the same reason I'm studying Applied AI and not just Finance: the interesting questions in business are rarely "what category does this transaction go in?" — they're about what the numbers mean, what's changing, and what to do about it.