Career Profile
Innovative strategist committed to the improvement of existing processes through technological means. Proven contributor in multiple disciplines of information technology.
Experience
- Supervise a team of seven distributed throughout the United States
- Enable hundreds of factories, labs, and buildings to deliver greater business value through connected and secured environments
- Guide customers with mission-critical infrastructure and cyber-physical systems to reduce their cybersecurity risk and improve operational resilience
- Create protection, visibility and insights - to enable proactive risk mitigation as well as accelerated response to help avoid disruption and downtime
- Reduce barriers, enabling busy teams to leverage better data for better results
- Help execute on departmental/company goals, increase shared understanding across teams, foster communication/collaboration, and reduce work friction
- Protect and steward specific use networks (manufacturing, process control, lab, test, etc.) in assigned geographic area comprising upper Midwest
- Drive digital transformation of the North Central US territory, containing three top of the twenty-five sites per IT leadership
- Partner with relevant IT teams to improve reliability and performance of the factory floor
- Study factory environments to heavily reduce downtime and assess operational risk, bridge OT/IT support gap when necessary
- Proactively corrected underlying problems that would have caused significant outages
- Created documentation and scripts for factories to use with the service desk in the event of downtime.
- Designing, implementing, and remediating industrial control networks to emphasize redundant communications, functional separation, and manageable security
- Specialize in medium-term projects involving complex geographically distributed systems with costly downtime effects, particularly network design and firewall policy
- Assisted a midstream oil and gas operator with migrating their production network to an isolated domain; separately helped assess emerging solutions in industrial cybersecurity software
- Designed network and hyperconverged systems for high-availability and reliability at milling operation
- Completed system upgrade of a dairy plant, improving virtualization capabilities and SAN storage
- Left on good terms after a change in the political party majority
- Managed a diverse staff of seven, reorganized into three units: IT Services, Systems, and Development
- Catalyzed continuous improvement throughout organization; guided adoption of new technologies; implemented improved identity and access management and SSO through ADFS 3.0 for Office 365
- Prioritized which internal applications to redevelop, improve, fix, cease development of, or abandon; used JIRA to formalize SDLC of existing and new applications; shared future roadmap with leadership
- Orchestrated IT onboarding efforts of new Senate majority and newly-elected Senators including extensive moving and secondary offices; formalized service offerings
- Pioneered use of an internal Knowledge Base for technical documentation as well as a How-to library for end users; When possible, resolved tickets linked to the relevant KB article
- Instituted IT Service Management (ITSM) model offering a standardized method to record and track work using Atlassian products and ITIL methodology; modeled processes for service desk work
- Created first formal efforts at soliciting feedback from end users, discussing changes through a committee structure, and organizing groups of beta testers
- Deployed private and public WiFi network for the MN Capitol Building, including 150+ wireless access points (WAPs); participated in wireless survey; devised security protocols
- Pitched alternate network topology for Capitol renovation, resulting in $20k savings due to more economical SFPs; network topology included 2 core rooms funneling connectivity to 17 closets
- Managed vendor relationships, support contracts, and maintenance costs; deduplicated when beneficial
- Facilitated joint efforts between development and other IT staff (DevOps) to improve software delivery; guided implementation of BitBucket as first version control server and Bamboo for release management
- Planned transition from Novell OES to Microsoft Active Directory; devised scripts to aid in conversion
- Proposed low-cost in-place upgrade of workstation base; devised method to ensure minimal downtime
- Built robust load-balanced Ubuntu Linux servers for websites and internal/external database connections; saved costs by changing database backend from MS SQL to MySQL.
- Formalized vCenter Server virtualization with enforced templates; migrated to C-series Cisco UCS rack server, integrated this with Nimble hybrid flash storage array
- Centralized logging from as many devices as possible into a syslog-ng instance; logs were then forwarded to a Splunk instance for monitoring and analysis
- Instrumental in the network design and deployment at new building including 22 switches and 37 WAPs
- Manage wired and wireless network; maintained 99.993% uptime during tenure
- Dispatched application updating mechanism and enabled remote support capability for over 350 workstations; technicians could support Senators in their home districts
- Evaluated, then executed modern solutions for IP address tracking and enterprise password management, replacing poorly-maintained text files
- Maintained and developed two higher education websites and applications through shared services
- Used version control system to collaborate with back-end developers
- Recommended potential efficiencies, optimized content for voice, readability and search engines
- Collaborated and planned with department faculty to share unique features of each academic program
- Queried, joined and interpreted proprietary data with SQL for use in web applications
- Devised principal features of redesigned website (wireframes, information architecture, content norms)
- Spearheaded effort to replace EOL content management system and migrate to a newer CMS
- Implemented campus-wide calendar/events system in use by academics, admissions, and student life
- Managed e-Marketing budget; completed ~5 targeted online advertising campaigns annually
- Mentored employees in own department; supervised student employee; served on faculty searches
- Developed several key college websites including Admissions, Library, Online Courses, and Orientation
- Wrote new content and refined existing content to ensure a fresh, clear and consistent voice
- Instituted and maintained social network presence including YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter
- Led technology seminars and presentations at student events and faculty development days
- Offered adjunct teaching position in Innovation Technology and Instruction department
- Created/sourced graphic imagery as needed; directed/produced videos used in new student orientation
- Developed over 35 commercial and non-profit websites via proposal and contract work
- Cultivated entrepreneurial initiative by targeting local businesses and offering web marketing services
- Demonstrated project management skills; handled all aspects of web production including training
- Created websites based on client requirements, prototyped web designs and information architecture
- Trained clients in web best practices and set up basic content management systems
- Developed project-based time recording system for company of 75 employees; created reports
- Responded to help desk tickets as informal member of the IT department; built systems for new employees
- Revised departmental website to meet external audience needs and ensure Sect. 508 compliance
- Developed and implemented an internal Intranet site; composed all content
- While employed at the Center for Small Towns, created web presences for rural MN communities
- Developed or improved several University websites for academic and student service departments
Certifications
Projects
2016 Cisco CCNA NetRiders competition - Cisco NetRiders is a competitive series of online exams and
simulation activities using Cisco Packet Tracer. After three rounds of competition, I was ranked 15th in North America, and the sole representative from Minnesota.
2015 Cisco Live Dream Team - Worked on a team of ten students chosen from over a hundred colleges and universities across North America to install and maintain the physical
network at Ciscos 2015 Cisco Live! event. The network supported over 25,000 users, on 1200+ Cisco WAPs and Antennas as well as over 300+ Switches. Our task was to install the physical equipment on location, and troubleshoot any issues as
they arose.
2015 Cisco CCENT NetRiders competition - Cisco NetRiders is a competitive series of online exams and
simulation activities using Cisco Packet Tracer. I was ranked first at my academy in round one and placed 35th out of 171 students invited to participate in round two.
3rd Overall, SANS CyberAces Minnesota State Championship - On March 15th, 2014
or Cyber Aces Day as proclaimed by Governor Dayton, I competed in-person at the Minnesota CyberAces State Championship presented by the SANS Institute. My score was third-best in the capture-the-flag style competition, and only the top
three reached the final level of flags. This program began in the fall of 2013 with students nationwide signing up to learn cybersecurity skills. Students were assessed on each of three learning modules, and at the conclusion of the
program, my test scores were third overall in Minnesota, securing an invitation to the championship.