Work Experience

THE PLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES, INC., Houston, TX 2007 – 2010

Vice President, Network Operations

Oversee all network functions and management for $150M company providing dedicated hosting to >20,000 customers in US and overseas. Supervise 10 direct reports and 25 additional staff in maintaining availability and resolving issues such as spam, phishing, DMCA violations, network performance, and installations. Administer $2.5M operations budget. Direct corporate-wide change management functions, PCI compliance, and relationships with regional network assigned number authorities.

  • Improved reliability 50% by reengineering Network Operations Center (NOC) to reduce issues and unplanned outages. Assigned certified technicians to all shifts and authored new policies/procedures.
  • Instituted 24×7 network engineering team to manage NOC escalations with zero response delays.
  • Established Computer Incident Response Center to reduce risk from legal action.
  • Created and implemented policies and procedures in support of SAS 70 Type II certification.
  • Lowered human-related outages to near zero by implementing company-wide change management process for network and related service delivery platforms.
  • Enabled compliance with latest transport capabilities by implementing IPv6 beta program. Additionally coordinated initial Texas IPv6 Task Force conference and gave presentation.

NTT COMMUNICATIONS, New York, NY / Houston, TX 2000 – 2007

Vice President, Engineering Operations, NTT America (2006-2007)

Managed all Global IP Network product life cycles for $91B+ telecom company’s North American operations. Oversaw product management, project management, and product engineering. Supervised staff of six and administered $2M operational budget. Led review and refining of provisioning and support processes. Developed effective relationships to support product delivered through vendors/partners.

  • Increased brand awareness vs. competitors (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint) within special interest groups such as IPv6, research, and university communities, through design and launch of new brand campaign for IP transit product line.
  • Directed early development of Denial of Service Countermeasure capability product, enabling scrubbing of bad traffic and movement of good traffic for subscriber sites. Created product specifications, conducted market and pricing research, and led testing of third-party technologies.
  • Spearheaded additional sales channel opportunities by developing relationship with General Services Administration to promote IPv6 transport product. Prepared all documentation and contract specifications, including reporting and invoicing requirements.

Vice President, Engineering Operations, Verio Inc. (2001-2005)

Led development of new maintenance management process at division specializing in wholesale and retail IP transit. Supported NTT’s global IP network support and development operations. Served on divestiture team, facilitating sell-off or closing of POPs in 26 markets. Member of IP transit product engineering and product management programs. Coordinated capacity for US national backbone. Compiled sales projects and development models. Created complex projections to ensure necessary bandwidth without over-provisioning capacity.

  • Personally developed first company-wide change management process, resulting in fewer maintenance issues and better customer satisfaction.
  • Contributed to NTT’s place as global leader in IPv6 transport worldwide by overseeing team that brought first commercial IPv6 transport service to market in US.
  • Selected to present to Congressional hearing on IPv6 readiness that achieved major positive press.

Vice President, Technology Services Operations, Verio Inc. (2000-2001)

Following acquisition of Verio by NTT Communications, maintained previous responsibilities while taking on management of internal IT support organization. Maintained enterprise IT hardware and systems. Supervised staff of five managers and 50 indirect reports.

  • Established Verio’s NOC and support team for Internet-based services.
  • Created company’s first corporate telecom team to rationalize phone, trunk, and long distance usage strategies. Eliminated waste and paved way for unified dialing plan and better voicemail access.
  • Worked in conjunction with Microsoft to standardize company licenses for Windows and MS Office.

VERIO, INC., Houston, TX / Englewood, CO 1998 – 2000

Director, Technical Operations (1998-2000)

Updated and improved NOC functions. Assisted with transition process following acquisition by NTT Communications. Supervised three direct reports and 30 employees. Administered $2M budget.

  • Created transition team to consolidate email, USENET news, and DNS services into single set.

Director of Technology (1998)

Established Houston POP and consolidated three recently acquired POPs. Assisted with regional and national network planning.

  • Managed construction of Houston POP’s infrastructure and negotiated telecom services contracts.

ACADEM CONSULTING SERVICES, Houston, TX 1994 – 1998

Client list included:

  • Baylor College of Medicine
  • Rice University
  • The American Leadership Forum
  • The ForeFront Group, Inc.
  • Lyondell Petrochemical
  • Sprint
  • Air Liquide America
  • Compaq Computer Corporation
  • The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City

Projects included:

  • coordination and implementation of the transition of an NSF Regional Network from the NSFNET Backbone Service to an alternative provider
  • developing a transition plan for integrating ATM into an existing diverse networking architecture based on FDDI, Ethernet and Token Ring technology
  • assisting an organization in establishing a network security policy and implementing a firewall environment to reflect that policy
  • developing device drivers on Unix systems
  • reviewing and commenting on the engineering plans for the implementation of a large institutional network serving business, research and other needs of the institution

BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, Houston, TX 1984 – 1994

Executive Director, Technical Architecture & Planning (1994)

  • Coordinated the creation and deployment of new technical strategies and network-based services for the College
  • Served as a partner with the Vice President for Information Technology in development of the College Information Technology platform
  • Managed the engineering and deployment of the enterprise-wide data network. This network provided service to 13 buildings and around 6000 users in the Texas Medical Center. It was also connected to the Internet as well as local hospital networks and the University of Texas at Houston network.
  • Also responsible for a network in The Woodlands, Texas serving two remote facilities for the College

Director, Systems Support Center (1989-1993)

Lead a team of 32 that provided operational and systems support for a Unisys 2200/400 class mainframe, two VAX 6000s, and a number of Unix machines from Sun, Solbourne, Unisys, Kubota Pacific, Silicon Graphics, DEC, and Sony and managed with a budget in excess of $1 million.

  • Altered the structure of a core support organization from one optimized for large centralized mainframe environments to one capable of supporting client-server applications and distributed computing
  • Operated the central computing facility of the school which including clinical billing and core accounting systems

Manager, Networking (1987-1989)

Assumed responsibility for the enterprise wide network at the College with the primary task of migrating it from XNS to TCP/IP as the core protocol.

  • Was a principal establishing SesquiNet (an NSF-sponsored regional network) as an operational network
  • Facilitated the creation of a Texas Medical Center Network Technical Advisory Group to coordinate inter-institutional networking and served as chairman of this group until 1994

Senior Systems Analyst (1986-1987)

  • First brought in to help with the distributed computing infrastructure of the Virtual Notebook System (VNS), a distributed hypermedia system that was in use by the scientific community at the College
  • Started the process of creating the infrastructure of what eventually became the Unix Support function of the Systems Support Center

Computer Systems Administrator (1984-1986)

Scientific programming to simulate the synaptic activity of hippocampus cells

  • Introduced Unix and C language programming to the researchers in this lab
  • Created one of the first laboratory networks (using TCP/IP and Ethernet) at the College