careers

Over the last 25 or so years I have worked in the IT industry in many different roles and capacities, but that is not all that I have done or accomplished.  In high school I didn't work any traditional part-time jobs like most teenagers do.

I was given a rare opportunity to work for a small family owned travel agency.  I started out helping around the office and delivering airline tickets to their corporate clients after school.  In the summers, they trained me to become a travel agent and sent me to specialized training in order to get my travel agent accreditation.  It was a fabulous experience that fed my travel needs and exposed me to so much culture at a young age, but it was not my inner calling.

After high school I had considered enlisting in the Armed Forces to serve my country.  I took the standard military ASVAB exam and nailed it with a very high score.  My recruiter informed me that after I picked the branch I wanted to serve in and complete basic training that my score would guarantee me whatever specialization I wanted.  Unfortunately, that was not completely accurate.

With my passion for scuba diving, the obvious choice was to join the Navy and apply for BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition and become a SEAL.  My recruiter said that was not going to be an option because I was, get this, too tall.  I was 6'4" when I graduated high school in the early 1980s.  The US was a little more than a decade away from their experience in the Vietnam   Conflict and "tunnel warfare".

They wanted little guys that could fit in underground tunnels and I was not it.  Nowadays, the Navy wants big guys to be SEALS - I guess I was born at the wrong time in history.  So unfortunately that dream was crushed for me but I still had a desire to serve and make a difference.

Since a military career was now not in the cards for me, I still had a longing to be a part of something larger than myself. I had also grown up watching the classic cop shows like Adam-12, Dragnet, and one other show that didn't last very long called 240-Robert.  That show was about the LA County Sheriff's Department Search and Rescue unit.

A career in Search and Rescue appealed to me.  I thought to myself that it would be a close second to what I had originally hoped to become.  I had heard that it took years to get into that unit after you "paid your dues", but I thought I would give it a shot.  At the age of 21, I applied and processed for a specialized unit with LA County as a Police Officer.  After rigorous screening and testing I was accepted and got my academy date.  I graduated the police academy in 1985 and then got my duty assignment - South Central Los Angeles.

I worked that station for 10 years in patrol.  During that time I worked in several specialized task forces including gang and narcotic enforcement as well as service as a field training officer (FTO), and as an acting sergeant supervising the teams from time to time.

I also worked during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. Having experienced that crisis first hand, I can openly say it tested my courage, training and resolve - it was a very scary and dangerous time to be a police officer in those communities at the time.

I had been an early enthusiast with computers starting out in high school with the Commodore 64.  During my law enforcement career my interest in computers turned into a hobby which quickly morphed into a series of side businesses that I operated on my free time.  I started out helping family and friends install software and upgrade components on their personal computers.  Before the days of Dell and HP, I saw an emerging market in assembling personal computers from the component level and reselling them to individuals and small businesses.

I had a thriving part-time business that kept me busy and brought in additional income that continued to grow.  As computer networking started to become mainstream, I pivoted and taught myself early network operating systems such as Banyan Vines, LANtastic and eventually Novell Netware.

At this time in my life I had a thriving side business that was trending to produce more annual revenue than I was making as a civil servant.  I was at a crossroad, do I remain in law enforcement and finish out my career or do I take a leap of faith and go all-in with my computer business?

As difficult as this decision was, I made the move and left my law enforcement career behind and ran my business full-time.  Little did I know at the time, this would be the best decision I had ever made - one that would propel my career in new and fulfilling ways.

In just a few short years of operating my business full-time I started retaining several corporate customers as I began specializing in network services, primarily around Netware.  I was supporting a regional 24-hour cable news station called the Orange County NewsChannel (OCN), in Southern California. They seemed very satisfied with the level of service and support I provided but to my amazement they came to me with a proposition that was hard to turn down.

In the mid 1990s, OCN was growing by leaps and bounds.  They wanted me to join their team and support all IT operations for the TV Station.  This would require me to shudder my business and work for them full-time.  I accepted their offer and started my career in what would now be considered "in-house IT".  I was responsible for a mission critical Netware environment that connected both PC and Macintosh endpoints to the network.

I worked for OCN for a few years until they were acquired by Century Communications, a large cable TV operator at the time.  I was promoted to an IT management position working for the parent company overseeing their Southern California Advertising Sales division supervising a small staff of technicians and  network administrators.  We moved away from Netware and embraced Microsoft Windows NT as our network infrastructure of choice.

A few years later, Century Communications was acquired by Adelphia Communications and my role in this larger company went regional.  I again was promoted to a Regional IT Manager and was responsible for all west coast IT operations spanning California, Washington, Colorado and Idaho.

I now managed a larger staff and was tasked with integrating several cable TV acquisitions that Adelphia purchased in a very short time period.  This was a very challenging and rewarding period in my career.  I had to blend and migrate several different companies IT infrastructures into one, along with blending a team of engineers in the process as well.

As technology advanced, we migrated network services to Windows 2000/2003 and implemented Cisco as our routing and switching platform of choice.  During this period I became immersed in Cisco and really fell in love with this technology.  After years of doing system administration I was now transitioning into a network engineer.

Then bad news broke.  In the early 2000s, scandal hit the newswire.  The principals of Adelphia were charged with fraud by the SEC which caused a downward spiral for the company.  The execs went to prison, the company went into bankruptcy and conservatorship, mass layoffs happened and the company was parted out to other cable operators.  I unfortunately did not dodge the reduction in workforce and found myself out of a job in 2004.

I kept myself busy by getting some short term IT contract work until I was offered an opportunity working for a start-up managed services provider (MSP), known as All Covered.  Their business model focused on providing outsourced IT services to small and medium sized businesses.  In their infancy, All Covered had service offerings around Windows and Mac desktop support, Windows server support and other SMB targeted solutions.

Even though I had previous IT consulting experience when I ran my own businesses, this was really the launchpad into my professional IT consulting career, where to this day I operate in.  I worked for All Covered for 10 years in various senior engineering and consulting roles and was eventually promoted to Service Delivery Manager where I supervised and managed a team of over 10 employees, while still supporting customers with technical challenges.

All Covered went through a series of venture capital partners until such time as they were acquired by Konica Minolta.  Konica was trying to establish themselves as a player in SMB space for outsourced IT services.  We started to expand our offerings and I was tasked with developing a plan to offer outsourced services supporting various Cisco technologies.

I put together an offering for our customers around Cisco routing & switching, security, wireless, and the emerging VoIP market for All Covered.  I built and managed the team that would deliver those services as we grew that business segment for our customers.  I really missed working in the Cisco realm but unfortunately adoption of Cisco offerings in the SMB space was a difficult sell.

Although I really wasn't looking for new opportunities, I was contacted by an IT recruiter in late 2012 about a senior network position working for a small Cisco Gold Partner in Irvine, California.  This was my dream job - being fully engaged in Cisco technologies with a valued added reseller (VAR) where I would design and implement enterprise sized network solutions.  I would have to leave my management position and get back in the trenches.

I couldn't pass this up - I made the move and once again I never looked back.  The company that hired me was Epoch Universal, a small but mighty VAR that had an excellent reputation with Cisco and the industry as a whole.  I was now part of a team that had brilliant talent that possessed amazing skills.  I worked at Epoch for over 5 years, eventually becoming the Director of Engineering, overseeing operations and staff management again.

As things seem to go in this industry, Epoch was acquired by PCM in 2017 and it was quickly apparent PCM would not be a good fit for me.  A former colleague of mine who left Epoch convinced me to follow him over to another Cisco VAR called ConvergeOne.

I interviewed an was quickly offered a position as a Senior Security Engineer in their professional services division.  In 2019 I was again promoted to management and became the Director of Professional Services for C1's Digital Infrastructure Group.  Today, I remain in this role where I directly supervise a team of over 22 engineers and support staff as well as manage client escalations, customer relations and budget targets.