Speaker Details

I am a technologist and am unique from other speakers because I have experience as a technical people manager, practitioner (strategist/architect/engineer), and have actively taught for 7 years at the collegiate level. 

At Cerner I have returned to technical engineering manager role.  I really enjoyed leading architects and software developers to create a new innovative solutions that support health care.  Our team is the "SkunkWorks" of Cerner Technology Services. We are pioneering new infrastructure and development technologies such as OpenStack private cloud environments with IaaS, CaaS/PaaS, DBaaS, DNSaaS, and LBaaS. We evangelize Mesos, Kubernetes, and Docker platforms to streamline continuous delivery and DevOps.  Lastly, we are the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Centers of Excellence team that provides architectural guidance, budget management, and optimization strategies. 

From Nov 2010 to Aug 2014, I worked for Microsoft as a Technology Strategist, and I was responsible for the all up technical relationship across all levels (COO/CIO to IT Manager) with Sprint and Cerner. From a technical standpoint, I aid in architecting enterprise data center solutions both in the cloud (Office 365 and Azure) and private cloud (on prem) leveraging both Microsoft and 3rd party solutions in support of ITIL.

       While working at Sprint, Microsoft and Cerner, I prioritized time outside of work to be an adjunct professor.  Education is very important to me and being able to teach others has largely helped me in the professional environment.  I routinely communicate complex topics to students in ways that help them understand.  For example, I discuss practical applications of all the topics to provide relevance to otherwise esoteric concepts such as graph theory or algorithmic efficiency.  During lecture I get practice at reading students body language to gauge interest and adjust my presentation accordingly.  My favorite aspect of teaching is when a student has an epiphany of understanding.  

Previously working for Microsoft (Nov 2010), I worked at Sprint in the Network division for nearly 15 years. Throughout my tenure I have saved the company millions of dollars and transformed the groups I have worked in by initiating and implementing practical innovative ideas.  Many of my innovations are creative uses of new technology applied to nontraditional areas.   I managed all aspects of the software development life cycle (SDLC) for a data warehouse system that maintains a $30+ billion EVDO, CDMA, and iDEN network.  The system enables Sprint to capacity plan (using statistically based forecast algorithms), optimize (using data mining algorithms), and report Sprint’s wireless network performance.