About Me
I was born on February 7, 1969 in North Ogden, Utah and I spent all my “growing up” years there. My dad (Gerald) taught high school English and German (retired) and also taught at Weber State University in Ogden. My mother (Sharon) was a stay-at-home mom and had the tough task of raising me and my younger sister (Chantelle) and brother (Greg). Both are still living in Utah and constantly tell us they wish they could see their grandkids more often!
I attended public school in Utah, and upon graduation from high school, started college at Brigham Young University where I attended one semester before accepting a call to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in northern Germany for two years.When I returned back to Utah, I went back to school at BYU and completed my education. I started out majoring in Computer Science but quickly found out I wanted to do more than develop code, so I changed my major to Information Technology and graduated in that area with minors in German and Business in 1995.
It was at BYU that I met my wife, Angela, and we were married in May of 1991. Married life during college boosted my GPA greatly, gave me my best friend, and granted us our first daughter, Sarah in 1993. It also helped give my life more direction and someone to help drive me toward my goals.
During my college experience, I was able to gain great practical experience in my field by working for Parlant Technology (selling grade book-related hardware, software, and telecommunications technology to schools), being employed by Novell (technology support), and completing an internship in the IT department at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' headquarters in Salt Lake City.
Upon finishing college, I took a job at Arthur Andersen in Chicago where I worked for almost 8 years. At Andersen, I was heavily involved in architecting and building the firm’s global Novell network consisting of over 1500 servers and 86,000 highly mobile users. I was also the chief architect and developer of a mobile networking solution for engagement teams at client sites worldwide. Other responsibilities included developing, managing, and presenting global training sessions in Europe, Asia, and the U.S, project management, best practices development, and application development of Novell utilities and services. I greatly enjoyed my work there and was planning on staying for quite awhile longer when … along came Enron! I was fortunate to be one of the last IT folks at Andersen to turn out the lights on my way out the door, so I kept my job longer than most.
I then took a job at Grant Thornton LLP in (also in Chicago) in 2003 where I worked for almost 13 years. Initially, I was hired on as a Senior Internet Engineer with responsibilities to develop and implement new Internet, intranet, and extranet systems, maintain and enhance existing Internet and intranet infrastructure (i.e. servers, firewalls), and monitor key performance metrics around the intranet infrastructure. I then was promoted to Manager of Enterprise Systems Management and was in that role November 2011. I was then promoted to Senior Manager of Enterprise Systems Management and have been in that role ever since. My responsibilities in this area include everything desktop (standards, image, etc.), software integration, packaging, and distribution, security operations (patching, encryption, endpoint backup, etc.), enterprise monitoring, all local office infrastructure (power, A/C, cabling, servers, UPS, etc.), the firm's asset and configuration management processes and procedures, and systems management-related applications development . I have also become a certified trainer for implementing the Franklin Covey 4 Disciplines of Execution process within the IT department. I have also had the privilege to present at the Computerworld Mobile and Wireless World Conference in 2007 as well as at the 2007 and 2008 Fall Collaborative Conferences of the Information Technology Alliance Group. I have also published multiple articles with companies such as Intel and Lenovo.
My work with Grant Thornton has helped the IT department earn coveted awards from Computerworld including 5 consecutive years in the “Top 100 Best Places to Work in IT” placing in the top 5 in 2006. Most recently, the firm’s IT department was twice awarded “2007 Laureate” status in the Computerworld Honors Program for work in data compliance and efforts in securing and managing the highly mobile workforce. Our case studies are now on file in the Library of Congress and at national archives in over 100 universities, museums and research institutions throughout the world.
Unfortunately, Grant Thornton decided to outsource IT, but I was re-badged to Capgemini (2016) and took on the role of Operations Delivery Manager for Workplace and Field Services on behalf of Grant Thornton. I was responsible for overseeing the support structure of 130+ local technicians, acting as an escalation and business relationship manager, managing the financial invoices for that group as well as the releasing of desktop solutions.
After a successful transition at Grant Thornton, I went to work for a short while at RE/MAX in Denver, CO. There, I held the role of Director, Business Relationship Management. My responsibilities included capturing and helping shape customer demand and determining how demand aligned to current and/or future business capabilities.
I am now employed as the Director of Call Center Technology – Local Site IT at Charter Communications (Spectrum) in Colorado Springs, where I manage a team of 86 technicians and 6 managers. I function as a business partner to the site Vice Presidents, Directors, and other call center senior leadership. I am responsible for defining the KPIs, metrics and dashboards to successfully manage a geographically diverse team and to ensure that the team achieves the highest levels of customer satisfaction. I travel around to the 48 sites regularly, so I'm on the road at least a week a month.
My family has grown from my college days of 1 daughter to 5 children – Sarah, Brittany, Kirstyn, Zachary, and Benjamin. Needless to say, they keep us very busy and I am very grateful that my wife is able to be a stay-at-home mom. I often joke (but with much truth behind it) that she works much harder during the day than I do!
Our family loves to spend time together camping (although camping in Illinois on mowed grass was MUCH different than out west) and we are very excited to camp more in “real camping conditions” here in Colorado. We enjoy traveling as well. Most of our trips are to see family or to see historical sites such as Washington D.C., Boston, Nauvoo, Kirtland (and all the other church sites), and many more. We enjoy watching movies and playing games together as well. We are looking forward to many more “outdoor” activities now that we are out west. Much of our family life over the years has been documented by yearly DVDs and also more recently a family blog. Those resources are available as well.