My History

Welcome to my story! Here you'll find my work history and experiences. Feel free to browse through and get to know my work.

Early days

McDonalds

I had worked a few jobs as a younger person, delivering newspapers and washing dishes at a Greek restaurant near home, but eventually began at McDonalds as a crew person. I quickly learned the various jobs and was promptly promoted. With a strong work ethic and leadership abilities, I was promoted to manager as soon as I was 18. Then promoted to higher level manager each subsequent year. I was moved from store to store a few times as the owner needed, to help shore up struggling management teams. I learned so much from this experience, like: working in a fast-paced environment, managing a very large team, supporting a customer base that had very high expectations, handling the various needs of my team with ages ranging from 14 to 90 (along with the associated perspectives), as well as training everybody from new employees to aspiring managers.

This was a really fun time but, McDonalds was never my end goal. After 6 years, I moved on.

Then...

Nationwide Insurance - part 1

After a short stretch getting my feet wet while working a helpdesk for a large electric company, I found a job with a small insurance company. It was my first hands-on job supporting computer equipment, applications, and phone hardware. It was exciting to learn all of the various technologies, both hardware and software, and learn how to research and troubleshoot various issues. After a couple of years, that company was purchased by Nationwide insurance. For a time, my role expanded to networking tools, managing servers, backups, pc imaging, email, user account maintenance, and more.

Modems were the bane of my existence.

After...

Nationwide Insurance - part 2

About 5 years in, I was asked to move across the country for the company. As a proven problem solver and people leader amongst my peers, I was tasked with leading a team of IT techs supporting remote regional claims offices. It started with four offices, then I was able to travel to help build out new ones. At the peak, I was was responsible for 10 regional claims and legal offices across the country. I built a team of 3 technicians and we worked diligently to provide support to locations that hadn't been properly supported previously. I trained my team and ensured that work was being performed effectively. I managed the backups, phone systems, and account maintenance as well as regular travel to meet with my customer base and management to ensure that my team was providing the best service possible.

As Nationwide Insurance began consolidating locations, I was tasked with closing many of the offices that I once help build and support. Four years later, they asked me to move again.

Later...

Nationwide Insurance - part 3

Another cross-country move brought me to my last role with Nationwide. This time was to aid in a very busy office and add my proven track record of support to a group in need.

I promptly went to work. I helped the only other tech and we fixed every problem we could find. I leaned into the user management side of things and dug into the needs of this office. I updated processes and procedures and found efficiencies to help our small team work smarter and provide faster and more effective support.

A few years in, I helped to relocate the office of about 400 people to a new location across town.

After that, the support structure changed and I found myself part of a team supporting users across the entire country. I was part of a team of about 100 techs supporting the entire 40,000 person user base. As my time in that role grew, I proved to be a diligent problem solver and effective relationship builder, as well as learning new tools and processes . One other person and I became part of a newly created team (just the two of us). We took on all of the tickets that the rest of the technicians were unable to resolve. It was often very difficult, extremely frustrating, and incredibly rewarding. Digging in, troubleshooting, and testing solutions to problems that nobody else was able to find was amazing. Outside of these "level 4" responsibilities, I continued to support the "regular" tickets as well, closing nearly 300 user support tickets per month.

I was also good at finding efficiencies in the organization and writing effective knowledge on the problems I found. I joined a small team tasked with problem management and performed a number of Root Cause Analysis projects and often trained the team on both troubleshooting complicated issues and basic RCA procedures. I also supported Change Management by helping to review and test upcoming changes as needed.

At one point, I found an efficiency that the management team said saved the company one million dollars per year.

During this time, I received multiple awards for my strong performance, problem solving, "Operational Excellence", and the "Infrastructure Delivery Spotlight" award from the CIO. After years of my team struggling to increase "engagement survey" scores, my manager asked if I would take the task to improve them. Working closely with my team, I found opportunities to better define categories, and then to build morale within the group. Our scores improved significantly and I received an award from the CEO for accomplishing this task.

After 8 years in this rewarding role, and nearly 20 years overall with Nationwide Insurance, it was time for me to find something new.

Lately...

PDC Energy & Chevron

I was fortunate to find a role with PDC Energy. I took on a team who's only leadership had been the VP of IT. As the Service Desk supervisor, I led the team of 8 desktop technicians in 4 office across 3 different states. In this role, I was able to guide this group to success by writing and enforcing policies and processes, hiring and releasing employees, and understanding and exceeding user expectations.

In my time, I built an excellent team. I determined gaps in the group's knowledge and then built a training plan to ensure that the team was capable of supporting all of the necessary applications and tools, as well as guaranteeing that no one person held all of the knowledge for any given need.

I assisted team members wanting to grow in the organization in finding new roles and encouraging them to follow their desires. While it was difficult to lose powerful employees, it felt good to help them flourish in new roles in the company.

I managed hardware inventory (about 800-1000 laptops and users) and led the team in evergreen hardware replacement. Working with leadership for scheduling and the Security team for data, I ensured that the operating system and applications were kept up to date by pulling software inventory reports and directing feature and security updates. I also managed some vendor relations.

As PDCE acquired other companies, I led the Service Desk to success by ensuring that computers were imaged, software was installed, IDs were created, etc. On the first day that the new companies joined us, my team deployed more than 100 computers and account information to new employees. I didn't demand any of their original computers, but in both acquisitions, new employees were ready and willing to move forward with their new computers and return their old ones within 2 weeks. The attention to detail and testing that my team and I performed, created a comfort level that lasted for years.

When it was time for the PDCE office to move across town, I led the efforts for all user-based IT tools. My team and I spent countless hours installing and testing hardware. On Our first day in the new location, there were minimal requests, no user downtime, and repeated praise from the management team.

People leadership was a large part of this role. Hiring and terminating employees, morale and team building, performance management and wage increases were all part of leading an amazing group of people.

In 2023, Chevron acquired PDC Energy. I assisted the IT functions wherever possible by providing knowledge and information, training, and attending meetings. I guided my team while working closely with the existing Chevron support teams to deploy new computers to all legacy PDCE users. As we transitioned to full-time Chevron tools, my team transitioned was well.

Seeing my ability, the new company found a place for me on the team as the IT Site Lead for the Rockies Business Unit. I continued to lead a team, provide information on legacy systems, act as a liaison between business units, and ensure a successful support structure.

Unfortunately, a large corporate restructuring meant that my role across the country (as well as 20% of the company overall) was eliminated.

Next...

I'm currently looking for my next opportunity.

I would like to find a place supervising a team where I can display both my qualities as a people leader as well as my passion to drive results. My track record of growth proves that I'm a capable of learning new environments and leading both small and large teams. My time at each of my previous companies is evidence that I like to fully understand my environment and truly appreciate the needs of the company and the role I'm placed in.