How I Lead
I have led IT teams in government, manufacturing and healthcare SaaS. The organizations were very different, but the job came down to the same things each time. Understand what the business actually needs. Spend money where it changes the outcome. Build a team and processes that keep things running. Stay technical enough to make sound decisions and to step in when a problem calls for it.
Start With the Real Problem
The first request is not always the right answer. At Mobile Heartbeat I was given a budget to buy more servers because the company needed more compute capacity. I recommended that we not buy them. Compute was not the real constraint.
We put the money into shared storage, licensed virtualization, backup and networking instead. That changed what the existing hardware could do. It was also the first step in turning a startup server closet into a fully redundant enterprise infrastructure platform.
As a leader, I see my job as understanding the problem well enough to recommend the right investment. That can mean saying no to the obvious one.
Plan for Growth and Change
Infrastructure has to support where the company is going, not just where it is today. At Mobile Heartbeat I led IT through:
- company growth and an acquisition
- SaaS expansion
- datacenter, colocation and cloud migrations
- the move to a remote workforce
Our network went from a single small-business internet connection to multiple carriers, BGP, a disaster recovery site and hybrid Azure. Each generation was planned as a step toward the next one, not as a one-off project.
Spend Deliberately
I manage a ~$750K annual operating budget (excluding payroll) and capital spending that typically ranges from $500K to $1M. I own vendor selection and technology purchasing.
There is no universally correct architecture. A small company with limited resources needs different solutions than an enterprise with strict availability requirements. I have built effective systems from open-source technology and modest hardware, and I have designed highly redundant environments on enterprise platforms. The right choice is the one that fits the requirements, the risk and the economics.
At Seneca Nation I secured funding for a $2.5M modernization program and delivered it on budget, within the planned 18 months.
Build the Team and the Process
Good results last when the team and the processes around it are solid.
- At Seneca Nation I led a nine-person team supporting about 1,300 users across 29 buildings. Process improvements and preventive maintenance cut monthly incidents by about 40% within 18 months.
- At Mobile Heartbeat I lead five direct reports. I promoted a team lead from within the team, and I introduced a change control process.
- I am now building a DevOps/NetOps learning path for the team around automation and infrastructure as code.
- I use ITIL as a practical framework, not as paperwork for its own sake.
Security and Compliance Are Part of Operations
In healthcare, reliability and security are part of the product. I implement infrastructure security controls, take part in incident response and security reviews, and support audit evidence collection in a HIPAA and SOC 2 environment.
A technically possible solution is not automatically the right one. I pay attention both to whether systems can be connected and to which system should own each responsibility.
Bridge Engineering, Customers and the Business
IT does not operate in isolation. I build and run the test environments that Engineering and QA rely on, and I work directly with customers, vendors and product engineering on production integrations.
I can discuss packets and SIP signaling with an engineer, architecture and integration with a customer, project constraints with a vendor, and cost, risk and business impact with an executive.
Stay Hands-On Where It Counts
Management has never replaced engineering for me. I designed and built the Linux/Asterisk backend for one of our products, and I still design critical network and infrastructure changes myself.
That depth helps me judge vendor claims and set realistic plans. When a problem crosses team or technology boundaries, I can follow the evidence until the actual cause is clear.
See Selected Results for examples, or download my résumé.