I am a Technology Executive who has worked in Information Technology in the United States for 28 years. I am a US Citizen, and a devout follower of Jesus Christ.

I began supporting Novell Netware (CNE) and Microsoft Windows servers (MCSE) right out of College in the early 1990s. During the mid 1990s I was involved in a very large Peoplesoft ERP implementation project where I picked up and mastered HP-UX skills.  In 1996 a project I was working on required a monitoring tool and I suggested deploying it on Red Hat Linux. At the time, Linux in the enterprise data center was unheard of, and my success using Linux meant that I would recommend it repeatedly over the years. As I would jokingly tell people afterwards, I was working with Linux when the Penguin was in diapers.  In the early 2000s, I led one of the most capable UNIX Server Engineering Teams in the Midwest, at Northwestern Mutual. I also led their data center move from a server perspective from their Milwaukee to their Franklin Campus. From there, I went on to introduce Linux to several very large enterprises, including United Airlines, which saved over $100MM by moving to Linux, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association which saved at least $25MM by switching. Along the way, I picked up numerous other supporting skills including VCS Clustering, VMWare virtualization, Amazon AWS and Azure Cloud. Between 2010 and 2017 I led the Linux Server Engineering teams for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Zebra Technologies. During this time, I worked very closely with their CISOs on numerous Cyber Security projects and initiatives. I also worked for Deloitte and Salesforce for a while, advising them on their Server Engineering and Cloud practices. Since March 2020 I have been working at Citadel Securities, a $53 Billion Hedge fund as one of their primary Server builders, implementing tens of thousands of servers, using the next generation of server deployment technologies.

While I love technology, I love business, finance, economics, management and leadership even more. I have been attempting to pivot my career increasingly into leadership and management roles. I am an extrovert --- a people person. My Myers-Briggs personality type is : EXECUTIVE (ESTJ-T) My career goals are lofty but achievable, and all end up in the C-Suite or Boardroom. I am foremost a big picture person -- a technology executive with real world business experience and smarts, with credentials from Harvard Business School to back ip up. So, what makes me a good fit for your Senior IT Manager / IT Director / VP or CIO role? It is the fact that over the past 28 years I have worn so many hats within various IT organizations. I have worked in the Consulting, the Government (Public Sector), the Life Insurance, Transportation, Telecom, Stock Exchange / Finance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and the Hedge Fund / Asset Management verticals. A sample of my experience in those roles is listed below, and underscores the varied experience and many hats I have worn during my 28 years in Information Technology. This varied experience is what I believe has given me a tremendous overarching 50,000 foot view of Information Technology organizations and how they operate, making me the perfect fit for your Senior Manager / Director / VP or CIO role.

As a Cloud Engineer, it has been my responsibility to:

• Architect, Engineer, Support, Monitor and Maintain Cloud-based solutions.
• Helped troubleshoot numerous AWS and Azure Linux server deployments of all flavors: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, AMI Linux, Tails, CentOS, Fedora, Kali and others.
• It has been my responsibility to take an existing on-premises financial middleware solution and move it en-mass to the cloud using AWS technologies.
• It has been my responsibility to migrate on-prem data center infrastructure, including physical and virtualized (VMWare ESXi hosted) database servers, web servers, middleware, file servers and other components to the Cloud (AWS and Azure)

• As a Virtualization Engineer, it has been my responsibility to:

• Architect, Engineer, Support, Monitor and Maintain VMware based solutions.
• Deployed ESXi Servers, VCenters, VRO, VRA, SRM and other VMware solutions
• Deployed and maintain numerous Windows and Linux server deployments of all flavors: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, AMI Linux, Tails, CentOS, Fedora, Kali and others.
• Plan and Virtualize bare metal workloads onto VMware
• Plan and deploy SRM and other VMware DR solutions

• As a Data Center Relocation Lead, it has been my responsibility to:

• Inventory all assets --- physical, virtual and software
• Prepare a dependency list of moves
• Inventory and assess all LAN and storage move requirements
• Document any Cloud connectivity requirements
• Assess, analyze and certify new data center for power, air-conditioning and airflow requirements
• Eliminate single points of failure (SPOF)
• Prepare VISIO and other documentation for source and target data centers
• Prepare migration timeline in co-ordination with stakeholders
• Carry out migrations in waves and post-migration checkouts

• As a Security Engineer, it has been my responsibility to:

• Architect, Engineer, Support, Monitor and Maintain safe computer networks, servers, desktops and a secure Enterprise Computing Environment using the latest and greatest Security tools in the market.
• Monitor threats and vulnerabilities (CVEs) and remediate or mitigate them with patches, bug fixes, code changes, firmware, hardware, or OS and software version upgrades.
• Deploy Security Agents across the Enterprise and utilize the same to evaluate security holes, lapses, as well as threats internal as well as external
• Drive process improvements to reduce risk and/or improve operational efficiency 
• Remediate findings from internal as well as external assessments 
• Perform periodic penetration testing in order to validate remediation effectiveness 
• Lead the implementation of select new security technologies  
• Lead the charge in incident response activities including forensic investigations 
• Identify unauthorized access, changes, acquisition or misuse of information, as well as threat-detection, Denial of Service, Malware or cyber-attacks.
• Performed penetration testing and ethical hacking.
• Performed internal and external system audits.
• Evidence gathering required for incident resolution, for specific cases such as legal proceedings.
• Implement and maintain security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools across the enterprise as well as private, public, and hybrid clouds, including, Qualys, Nessus, Rapid7, iptables, Secunia, SCAP, CrowdStrike, LogRhythm, Satellite Server 5.6, 6.0; UNIX/ Linux Patching, SCCM, ServiceNow, and Altiris.
• Acted as Security Incident Manager (SIM) and helped establish a Security Incident Response Team (SIRT) and create a Security Operations Center (SOC)

• As a Change Management/ServiceDesk Lead, it has been my responsibility to:

• Onboard all assets Configuration Items (CIs) into ServiceDesk/ServiceNOW Configuration  Management Database (CMDB)
• Installed and configured IT Service Management (ITSM) tools such as ServiceNow
• Validated and processed Requests for Change (RFCs)
• Manage Global Incidents as an Incident Manager (IM), escalating according to impact, severity and priority.
• Created Incident Communication Plans (ICPs) for communication to various teams.
• Created (Root Cause Analysis) RCAs for severe incidents causing outages to Production Infrastructure
• Co-ordinated security incidents with the Security Operations Center (SOC)
• Created Change Management Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
• Run Change Advisory Board (CAB) meetings
• Performed Post-Implementation Reviews (PIRs)
• Monitored Change Management process performance using established Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 
• Performed audits of the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to ensure accuracy of data

• As a Disaster Recovery Manager, it has been my responsibility to:

• Perform Enterprise-wide Risk Assessments and Business Impact Analysis
• Eliminate all Single Points of Failure (SPOF) within current Production Environment
• Catalog and Inventory all Applications and their Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
• Create Mission-Critical Application recovery order
• Plan, procure and deploy Hot Sites and Remote Site infrastructure
• Design and deploy real-time (SRDF, TruCopy etc) and near-real-time data replication as well as offsite and offline (tape) rotations with DR vendors such as Iron Mountain
• Plan the failover and recovery of virtualized VMware infrastructure using SRM. 
• Plan the people side of Business Continuity (Workflow and Notification Procedures, seating at remote sites etc.)
• Conducting actual recovery exercises
• Documenting time taken to recover each component during exercise, document failures or gaps and planning for remediation or plan of action for next exercise

• As a Project Manager it has been my responsibility to:

• Manage Projects using the Agile, Waterfall, Scrum, and other methodologies
• Used Project Management tools such as MS Project and Primavera in order to manage projects
• Initiated, Planned, Executed, Monitored and Closed out projects as defined in the PMBOK
• Brought projects in on time and under budget

• As a Team Leader / IT Manager it has been my responsibility to:

• Co-ordinate with HR in all aspects of personnel management
• Search for talent, interview, hire and onboard personnel
• Perform periodic performance evaluations, approve timecards, plan team vacations, plan team training as well as on-call schedules
• Fire, release and terminate personnel
• Plan an annual departmental budget
• Lead and guide IT projects from inception to completion
• Co-ordinate ITIL compliance and maintain an Enterprise Change Calendar
• Maintain and manage a ServiceDesk queue
• Conduct software licensing and compliance audits as well as hardware asset inventories
• Develop, issue and evaluate RFPs and response from RFPs from vendors
• Maintain healthy vendor relationships