Always Curious, and Good at Solving Problems

Where it started

I've always been curious, and I love to learn. And, honestly, I'm pretty good at applying what I learn to seemingly unrelated problems. That has been true since a young age, and it threads through my whole career.

I built home computers, ran a dial-up FidoNet bulletin board with a friend, and taught myself programming. I loved that I could solve a problem and see the result immediately. When my computer science teacher was hospitalized for a week, he asked me to teach the class.

Then I started consulting for local businesses. I'd sit down with owners, understand their challenges, and write software to solve them. Getting paid was great, but what motivated me was seeing the difference it made.

Where it led

I joined Clear Technologies as an outsourced consultant, carried on with Clear C2 after it split off, and became Head of Technology there, designing, building, and running its entire data center, network, hardware, and security infrastructure.

Along the way I built and led database, DevOps, and operations teams, and I've mentored engineers into leadership roles. Developing people into leaders who can own their areas is a big part of how I got here.

Infrastructure, applications, databases, networking, and security aren't separate functions to me. They're parts of one business system. That lets me weigh decisions technically and commercially, and communicate with everyone from engineers to executives.

The result is an environment that's stable and mature enough to run with minimal intervention, and I'm proud of that.

Vroom!

Wheels and wrenches

When I'm not working, I'm a pretty good handyman around the house, and I enjoy working on my car and my motorcycle.

Education

I earned a B.B.S. in Management Information Systems from Dallas Baptist University, as an Honor Society student working full time and taking evening classes. I was the only student the Dean chose to join the leadership team refining the new MIS degree program.