I serve as the CIO of VSO. In this capacity, I am responsible for innovation, maturation, and got to market approach for the VSO offerings. These days, that means a primary focus on our FogLifter® software suite. I am the Executive Sponsor for VSO relationships with Kaiser Permanente, HCL, ExxonMobil, and Stanford Research Institute.

I started my career in a variety of engineering positions, finding myself as Managing Director of major accounts at Novus Consulting Group, when it was sold to IBM in 2007. Inside IBM, I ran Storage Services Sales for North America, and then left IBM to start an IBM channel delivery organization for Glasshouse Technologies. At Glasshouse, I grew a sales and delivery organization in the US and EMEA. In 2014, I became a partner in Xceed Group, a UK company, and became CEO of FIMS, which was the US subsidiary of Xceed. During my time at FIMS, I grew the organization from zero to $10M in 2 years. The focus of FIMS had been IBM outsource subcontracting. The organization grew to include 12 outsource contracts and approximately 125 staff.

While at Xceed, I tried an experiment: to get my engineers to train military vets, like my brother Duke, for careers in IT. This worked so well that Xceed eventually hired almost 50 veterans, and discovered the amazing cross-pollination that occurred between vets and IT engineering. Seeing this success, I wanted to double down on this method and build an organization that was majority vet-delivered while aiming at a more diversified customer base and focused on hybrid cloud managed services. Having worked closely with Steve O’Keefe at Novus, I shared my vision with him, left Xceed, and together we started VSO.

Well, I love VSO because this firm is indeed for me a labor of love. I feel that VSO is the culmination of 15 years of work. At Novus I’d begun honing the skills to sell and deliver managed services through a channel like IBM. At IBM, I found out how things really work inside a large corporation at scale. At Glasshouse, I built a thriving business on two continents and 5 countries-with all the local challenges and nuance that that entails. At Xceed, I discovered the passion of giving vets careers in IT. At VSO, I found a partner in Steve that agrees with me on the important things but differs in approach enough to make sure I’m still learning every day. We’ve assembled a team that humbles me every week with their hard work, genius insights, and innovative ideas. We are blessed to have grown faster than any of my previous firms and are already a highly diversified company, striving towards our vet mission, and delivering hybrid cloud services. With the right team, you can do anything!

In the last year, I became a new grandfather-a role which delights me every day. I spend a lot of time working with my wife to maintain our property and improve spiritually and physically. I’m an avid reader and have recently begun working on a couple of books.