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Professional Summary

Senior developer advocate and technical marketing leader with 30 years of experience in systems, DevOps, and cloud technologies, specializing in making complex technical concepts accessible and understandable. Proven track record of building developer communities and leading high-visibility projects like AWS Container Days, GitOpsCon, and Kubernetes events while maintaining active Kubernetes community leadership. Known for cross-organizational collaboration and creating educational content that bridges technical capabilities with business value. Deep expertise in infrastructure automation, containerization, and cloud-native technologies. Driven by the belief that technology should improve humanity.

Professional Experience

Senior Developer Advocate, Amazon Web Services — Commerce, MI — Oct 2021 to Present

  • Led key components of Valkey’s developer engagement strategy through targeted content creation and global event representation, resulting in increased project participation and product adoption
  • Organized and led Amazon’s expansive 50+ speaker, 30+ session re:Invent 2023 Kubernetes and Containers track, increased customer satisfaction (CSAT) scoring metrics for track
  • Taught AWS devs how to do open source for Finch; worked with the dev team to create a build, pull, push, run tool; consulted on tough strategy decisions; built public-facing infrastructure for release
  • Produced multiple AWS Open Source Partner videos in-studio; simplified technical language for a broader audience, drove understanding between partners, product marketing, and program teams
  • Updated the AWS Open Source website; analyzed metrics, established benchmarks, improved performance, and SEO metrics. Updated to the latest design standards. #1 Google rankings.
  • Launched EKS.news, a newsletter covering the latest updates on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS): an additional mechanism to inform customers about new features and updates
  • Trained Kubernetes Product Marketing team in the ways of open source and more about how the CNCF and Kubernetes ecosystem works; used training to provide essential knowledge to the team
  • Authored Amazon EKS 1.22 & 1.23 release blogs; updated customers on critical product changes
  • Co-lead Kubernetes Contributor Comms team, spreading the word about significant events in the Kubernetes community, including event comms, crisis comms, ecosystem changes, and socials
  • Produced/Hosted Kubernetes Day 0 event AWS Container Day at KubeCon EU 2023 Amsterdam
  • Organized and ran GitOpsCon EU 2021, including everything from marketing, talk selection, and hosting the event with fellow organizers

Cloud Native Ambassador, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) — Commerce, MI — Jan 2018 to February 2023

  • GitOpsCon NA 2021 Program Committee member, multiple times speaking at CloudNativeCon + KubeCon, and countless talks at DevOps, Kubernetes, and Cloud Native events
  • Stood up Kubernetes Upstream Marketing team, an approver of tweets from K8sContributors, acquired hardware for streaming community meetings to lessen the load on others
  • KubeWeekly curator, Kubernetes YouTube channel admin, Contributor Summit workshop facilitator, Community Meeting and webinar moderator, and SIG-Contributor Experience member
  • Advocates for Kubernetes and the cloud native ecosystem through the acclaimed and independent newsletter, DevOps’ish. Grew subscriber base to 6,300+ subscribers from Dec 2016 to Nov 2022
  • With the help of other Kubernetes community members, created the first-ever #KubeKhan at KubeCon Seattle 2018; brought together community members in a come as you are environment

Principal Technical Marketing Manager, Red Hat — Commerce, MI — Aug 2019 to Oct 2021

  • OpenShift.TV Executive Producer: in charge of finding content, talent, showrunning, marketing, growth, and facilitating technical components of live productions
  • Training others in how to make use of the infrastructure in place for OpenShift.TV to grow the channel’s bench of hosts and producers across the globe
  • Turned OpenShift.TV into a Red Hat corporate branded product: Red Hat Live Streaming
  • Hosted and/or produced over 700 hours of content with over 2 years of live watch time.
  • Primary community interface as a CNCF Ambassador who is also focused on Operators and their usage for operations teams; led Ansible Operator workshops at AnsibleFest and Red Hat Summit
  • Acted as a liaison between an Infosec team and a product team after a critical vulnerability was discovered; facilitated responsible disclosure of the vulnerability
  • Built workshops, Katacoda, and other instructional materials to enabling the field to be informed about Red Hat’s cloud native offerings plus competitive intelligence to position products in the market
  • Worked with Red Hat D+I, Events teams to make inclusive, constructive learning spaces at events
  • Evangelized Red Hat and many other open source offerings through official CNCF communications
  • Gave five talks in three days for IBM FastStart 2020; taught sellers and partners on the advantages of OpenShift for AI/ML workloads, monitoring capabilities of Prometheus, and technical roadmaps

Principal Product Marketing Manager, Red Hat — Commerce, MI — Jun 2018 to Aug 2019

  • Evangelized Kubernetes Operators with Ansible in Business Unit by engaging leadership to prove importance; scheduled developers on podcast, worked w/ team to build landing page, and presented talks at Red Hat Summit 2019
  • Ansible blog curator, editor, and sometimes writer, room facilitator, survey staff management, and official after party event security for AnsibleFest 2018 in Austin, TX
  • Speaker and content creator for multiple public and private Red Hat events over the globe; enabled field to sell and market Ansible to customers intelligently
  • Instrumental in bringing community projects into the Red Hat Ansible Automation suite of tools; helped establish standards for testing and acceptance as well as scoring of Ansible content
  • Selected by leadership, peers as Red Hat Product Marketing Awards — Best New Red Hatter 2019

Senior DevOps Advocate, SJ Technologies — Commerce, MI — Jan 2018 to Jun 2018

  • Built Ansible-based infrastructure testing tool to identify quality concerns between functional areas delivering virtual machines; suggested remedies to reduce handoffs and increase automation
  • Set up Ansible automation to deploy Confluent Kafka; built OpenShift deployment for high-availability Kafka UI
  • Represented SJ Technologies as a public speaker at events across North America; spread our DevOps practice message in talks based on research, experiences, and observations
  • Worked with BizDev, Sales, and Marketing teams to build new customer relationships, marketing materials to attract customers, and leveraged social media to build branding

Manager of DevOps, Bankrate.com — Detroit, MI — June 2017 to Nov 2017

  • Charged with $1M cloud migration efforts; moving physical/virtual datacenter to Amazon Web Services has projected $1M+ savings for company post migration; lead a team of six engineers and stakeholders
  • Recruited and led a team of five DevOps engineers through hundreds of JIRA tasks, expanding usage of Terraform and Ansible, containerizing workloads, and iterating on DevOps approaches to improve margins
  • Stood up CoreOS Tectonic in AWS through Terraform during a six-hour hackathon to demonstrate feasibility of Kubernetes platform

Global DevOps Engineer, Solarwinds MSP — Durham, NC — June 2016 to June 2017

  • Worked with product teams to improve documentation of Ansible development environments; identified additional tests for Ansible roles that could be done via Test Kitchen, Docker, and Serverspec or GitLab CI
  • Converted 300 GB MySQL table from MyISAM to InnoDB utilizing existing backup, MySQL replication, and Rackspace OnMetal instance; converted to more tolerant storage engine consistent with app architecture
  • Upgraded internal and customer TLS/SSL Apache Web Server configurations; trained staff on proper implementations, potential issues/concerns, and automated changes with Ansible
  • Utilized AWS EC2 and SQS in tandem with systemd and custom AMIs as well as existing application code to build job servers that would collect, verify, and purge duplicate copies of archived mail messages in AWS S3
  • Installed and maintained Jenkins for Continuous Delivery as well as automate Ansible Playbook runs against production infrastructure

Senior IT Analyst, Duke School of Medicine, Office of Research Informatics — Durham, NC — Dec 2015 to June 2016

  • Instituted configuration and systems management via Ansible; inventoried and standardized system configurations and package installations; trained other team members in the use of Git and Ansible
  • Identified inefficiencies in proxy and load balancing systems; interfaced with networking team members to utilize F5 load balancer for SSL termination, load balancing, proxying, and Shibboleth single sign-on
  • Worked with Duke Health Technology Solutions Windows Team to connect Linux to Windows environment for researchers working on the Duke Apple ResearchKit application, Autism & Beyond
  • Collaborated with vendor to build an Ansible Playbook and Role to standardize system setup and Ruby on Rails application deployment; enforced application configuration, security settings, and user management

Systems and Security Engineer, LCMS Plus, Inc — Chapel Hill, NC — July 2015 to Nov 2015

  • Created standardized naming scheme; utilized Ansible to programmatically implement system configuration settings on Fedora/RHEL systems; multiple discrepancies eliminated across systems in two cloud environments
  • Audited and standardized SSL implementations across all systems ensured best practices were being followed; used Ansible to improve Qualys SSL Labs scoring from failing to A ratings in most cases for customer installations
  • Improved DNS configurations/security while changing provider to CloudFlare; created standardized SMTP implementation making use of Mandrill to insure messages created within application were reaching customers
  • Repaired multiple failures in MySQL replication across environments; created standard process to convert tables from MyISAM to InnoDB and rebuild replicants; improved capabilities/performance in database and application
  • Provided guidance to developers on modern systems and PHP application architectures; audited application for potential security vulnerabilities and worked with teams to answer questions and mitigate identified issues

Platform Support Engineer, Windstream Hosted Solutions — Cary, NC — May 2014 to July 2015

  • Instituted Ansible for configuration management and automation across four environments; guaranteed 100% reproducible system setup fixing numerous systems issues and speeding implementation time
  • Worked hand-in-hand with development team to identify/resolve cloud portal issues; eliminated bugs and identified need to break up functions across multiple systems before customers adversely impacted
  • Instituted patching policy for both Linux and Windows systems allowing patching on pre-existing schedule; reduced number of outstanding vulnerabilities; secured systems with minimal down time

Linux System Administrator, Cree — Durham, NC — Mar 2014 to May 2014

  • Identified discrepancies in Oracle support documentation; worked with Oracle/Cree developers to update documentation; helped Oracle to provide robust RPM; drove teams toward a best practice implementation
  • Described issues with and changed an “install everything” mentality in Linux environments; guided stakeholders toward a better understanding of what applications needed to run leading to more efficient system provisioning
  • Stood up Linux systems monitoring using Xymon Monitor server; provided near real time data giving IT data used to “right size” Factory Automation systems; identified lack of perceived bottlenecks in Oracle EBS systems

Network/Systems Security Engineer, McClatchy Interactive — Raleigh, NC — June 2012 to Mar 2014

  • Charged with configuring DHCP, TFTP and Cobbler to enable unattended PXEBoot Linux server provisioning
  • Installed and maintained two HP TippingPoint IDS/IPS systems in primary and secondary data centers as well as TippingPoint Security Management System; designed data center protection plan to meet company goals
  • Bolstered time services by enhancing NTP server scheme; added CDMA time receiver in primary data center providing accurate timing to two data centers; optimized NTP system for operations during site isolation
  • Decommissioned 200+ defunct, compromised Drupal sites; removed vulnerabilities and cleaned up systems

Linux Systems Administrator, College Foundation, Inc. — Raleigh, NC — Feb 2012 to June 2012

  • Spearheaded NIST compliance efforts on RHEL 5 and 6 systems used for federal student loans program; applied Security Technical Implementation Guides in accordance with company priorities; created standard image
  • Trained network admins and instructed IT staff on Network Time Protocol and best practices for implementation; engineered/implemented RHEL 6 based, NIST compliant NTP server in under 8 hours
  • Instilled sound, best practice administration standards eliminating “wild west” mentality; standardized configurations on mail systems and network devices that were performing identical duties in two locations
  • Built RHEL 6 boxes using custom Kickstart config file to meet requirements of WebSphere administrator

Support Operations Specialist — McClatchy Interactive — Raleigh, NC — Jan 2011 to Feb 2012

  • Tasked with ensuring RHEL 3 and CentOS 5 Linux servers and network infrastructure used to max efficiency
  • Proactively addressed proprietary CMS errors/warnings to stave off emergencies; developed best practices for use during network/server outages. Created/disseminated documentation to entire support team
  • Identified/corrected several web site inefficiencies that contributed to excessive bandwidth utilization through Akamai. Saved company $2,000.00/month in overage costs. Employee of the Month – June 2011
  • Performed configuration management on 98 production Linux servers hosting 96 web sites across 30 US markets for the 3rd largest newspaper company in the US; successfully steered operational goals and tasks

Cyber Transport Systems / Communications, Computer Systems Controller — US Air Force — Nov 1999 to Dec 2010

  • Designed 440th Airlift Wing network enterprise—eliminated redundant infrastructure; reduced overall project cost by $13+ million. Awarded 43d Airlift Wing Communications & Information NCO of the Year
  • Trained 24 operators on General Dynamics Joint Biological Point Detection System; re-engineered wireless network capabilities ensuring operational capabilities; credited with saving $900 million defense program
  • Procured, designed, and installed RHEL 5 based Cacti device monitor to replace aging CiscoWorks 2000 software; trained 30 technicians on basic Linux administration while opening eyes to open source software
  • Trained personnel on use of 16 proprietary Unix based network monitoring systems; taught previously untrained technicians about basics of file systems, navigation, and use of available devices and interfaces
  • Identified US Central Command classified network Cisco router configuration flaw that baffled previous technicians; enabled necessary keepalive and restored network connectivity to forward deployed task force
  • Installed USAF ACC first ever Linux based network monitor during joint experiment to alert on network anomalies

Education and Certifications

Formal Training Courses

Global Knowledge Network Security I & II, UNIX/LINUX Security Course, Defense Information Systems Agency CONUS Telecom Seminar, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundation Workshop, USAF Communications-Computer Systems Control Apprentice & Craftsman Courses, REDCOM Theory and Application Training Course in Distributed Digital Switching, Microsoft Learning Course 5927A: Microsoft Office Project 2007, Managing Projects, RHCSA Rapid Track Course, Enterasys Switching NMS, Puppet Fundamentals Training, Pentaho Business Analytics User Console Training, Pragmatic Marketing Certified Level II (PMC-II; Foundations and Focus), Automation with Ansible I (DO407)