Location: Michigan, USA (UTC -5)
Expertise: Azure architecture and administration, Security, Networking, Microsoft 365
I have been in the technology industry over 30 years ago when I worked summers with a communications company pulling phone cables and placing phones. Some exciting projects that I worked were the main US Postal Service sorting facility in Washington, DC and NASA in Virginia. Technology at the time was not something that I wanted to do for a living, but here I am today.
Throughout high school and college, I was not comfortable at all with public speaking and was pretty nervous around large groups. After college, I began my career. The turning point with me was in 1995 when I was offered to enter into a Management training program with a communications and networking distributor. Within eight months, I was relocated to open a new distribution and sales center, which required me to hire and train employees that were just out of college and had no idea what a network hub or switch was, much less the category 5 cable that was needed to connect to computers.
I attribute this experience as ground zero for my ability to train and guide others. My next position was as a regional manager for a network component manufacturer. Here I began to provide certification classes for the products that we made, including how to terminate twisted pair and fiber cable ends. This was a part of the job that I really enjoyed because I was able to provide my knowledge and experience to others to learn and grow.
Over the years following, I have provided numerous training sessions at all levels of sales, engineering, marketing, customer care, and even union electricians.
Fast forward to the past 24 months, I began to freelance as a Microsoft Certified Trainer and get more involved in community events. I also began providing certification training for my company’s engineering and service delivery team for Microsoft Azure administrator and architect certifications. While having a full-time position as a Product Manager, I delivered ten training courses within my company. I also authored an online AZ-500 course and launched my blog site: captainhyperscaler.com.
I also began to participate and present at community events with live and pre-recorded content. These included the Azure Advent Calendar, Global Azure Virtual 2020, Cloud Lunch and Learn, and others. Overall in 2020, I have provided close to 20 community contributions, and I was awarded the Microsoft MVP award for Azure in September 2020.
Through my freelance training work, I was offered a permanent position as a Sr. Cloud Training Architect at Opsgility to provide live training and develop content for their on-demand Skill Me UP platform. I am now the Technical Training Content Lead, providing management, strategy, and guidance to the other content creators and external trainers.
I am very passionate about teaching and providing my knowledge to others. I feel that if something that I have worked with succeeds, then I succeed, and that gives me a great deal of personal and professional pride and fulfillment.
Please reach out to me on LinkedIn and Twitter to connect. If you are looking for guidance on how to get into public speaking, I am happy to help and even get you started with a session at my monthly user group.
