About
I'm the sole server and infrastructure administrator at Berry Companies, Inc., reporting directly to the CEO and working alongside an eight-person IT team. I own the production server fleet, virtualization and Citrix, SQL Server, identity, security tooling, and monitoring. Being the only person responsible for that stack means I build for reliability first: monitoring that tells me what broke before users do, PowerShell for anything done twice, and documentation thorough enough that I'm never a single point of failure.
My career started in K-12. I spent nearly fourteen years as Assistant Director of Technology at Circle USD 375, supporting about 1,500 users, and consulted on PowerSchool student information systems for twelve years alongside my full-time roles.
Security runs through all of it. I hold CEH v12, keep an offensive and forensic field kit current, and I'm working on a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in IT Management at WGU. Off the clock you'll usually find me on an Ozark river in a kayak or getting a storm chasing rig ready for the next season.
Selected work
- Active Directory hardening
- Cut the domain's PingCastle risk score by 92%, including a full DNS remediation on the primary domain controller, while running Active Directory as the source of truth for hybrid Microsoft Entra ID.
- Automated server patching
- Built unattended PowerShell patching for 24 production Windows servers. Weekly overnight runs install, reboot, and verify each server in sequence, report by email and Teams, and keep fleet patch compliance above 90%.
- NOC wall dashboard
- Designed an operations dashboard fed by 20+ scheduled monitors covering virtualization, SQL Server, Citrix, directory replication, backups, storage, certificates, 69 network sites, and Microsoft 365, with Teams alerts for anything that needs a person.
- Endpoint security at scale
- Manage security and remote support agents across 1,300+ Windows computers with coverage reporting from Lansweeper, and deployed a web filtering agent to the whole fleet.
- SQL Server and data pipelines
- Administer SQL Server 2022 and designed a four-database federation with vendor isolation and a procedure that reasserts permissions after restores. Built a twice-daily commission import with hash-based deduplication, a nightly equipment export, and a freshness monitor for the ERP replication feed.
- Secure vendor data exchange
- Stood up a hardened DMZ SFTP server that runs automated data pipelines with four external partners.
- Self-service reporting
- Deployed SSRS on a continuously replicated reporting database with least-privilege, read-only service accounts, so employees can filter by location and export to Excel.
- Incident response
- Led root cause analysis of a 21-hour ERP data feed outage, traced it to the upstream vendor, and delivered the incident report and verification runbook. Restored Citrix access during a cascading VMware and NetScaler outage, and resolved SQL blocking caused by Excel and ODBC schema lock starvation.
- Infrastructure operations
- Completed an HPE server refresh, moved monitoring and self-healing automation to a dedicated server with a remote watchdog, traced headquarters network congestion to Power BI gateway traffic, and wrote the IT documentation standard and weekly infrastructure reports for leadership.
- Responsible AI adoption
- Wrote a three-part employee AI awareness video series, ran a company-wide AI usage survey, and am planning the company's AI assistant licensing rollout.
Experience
-
Jun 2022 to now
Senior Systems Administrator
Berry Companies, Inc., Wichita, Kansas -
Feb 2019 to Jun 2022
IT Specialist
Berry Companies, Inc., Wichita, KansasRolled out Cisco wireless access points to all 70 company sites with the network administrator, streamlined onboarding and device imaging, and delivered Tier 2 and Tier 3 support under PCI-DSS requirements. -
Jan 2010 to Feb 2022
PowerSchool Consultant (part-time)
Self-employedImplemented and customized PowerSchool student information systems, automated grading and enrollment workflows, and trained administrators and teachers. -
Jul 2005 to Jan 2019
Assistant Director of Technology
Circle USD 375, KansasLed district IT operations for about 1,500 users, managed servers, applications, and networks, built the district's online enrollment system, and ran procurement and hardware lifecycle.
Toolkit
Infrastructure
- Windows Server 2016 to 2025
- VMware vSphere and Proxmox VE
- Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, NetScaler
- Cisco UCS, Dell PowerEdge, HPE
- All-flash and NAS storage
- Backup, DR, and high availability
Identity and access
- Active Directory and Group Policy
- Microsoft Entra ID and Entra Connect
- Microsoft 365
- MFA and least privilege
Security
- EDR, XDR, and managed SOC operations
- Incident response and root cause analysis
- Vulnerability remediation
- DMZ hardening
- Penetration testing
- NIST, CIS Controls, PCI-DSS
Automation and monitoring
- PowerShell and Python
- Microsoft Graph and REST APIs
- Power Automate and Teams webhooks
- PDQ Deploy and Lansweeper
- NOC dashboards
Data and reporting
- SQL Server 2022 and T-SQL
- Stored procedures and SQL Server Agent
- SSRS and Power BI gateway
- ETL pipelines and SFTP
Networking and cloud
- TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, VPN
- Firewalls and Cisco Meraki
- AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
- Cloudflare Workers
- Claude, Copilot, and ChatGPT
Education
-
In progress
M.S., Information Technology Management
Western Governors University -
In progress
B.S., Computer Science
Western Governors University -
2025
A.A.S., Software, Security and Development, cum laude
Cowley CollegeAlso completed Technical Certificate B (September 2025). -
2024
A.A.S., Cybersecurity
Butler Community College -
2024
Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies
Emporia State University
Certifications
- Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v12), EC-Council
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, Amazon Web Services
- IBM Cybersecurity Analyst Professional Certificate
- Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate
- Palo Alto Networks Security
- Microsoft AI and ML Engineering
207 licenses and certifications in total. The full list is available on request.
Lab and projects
- Enterprise home lab
- A rack of Dell PowerEdge R740xd and R630 servers and a Cisco UCS C220 M5, backed by NetApp and Tegile storage with out-of-band management through iDRAC and CIMC. Proxmox VE runs across the rack and a set of Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny nodes for testing changes, practicing security techniques, and self-hosting services.
- Security field kit
- Penetration testing and DFIR gear, including Hak5 tools, Flipper Zero, Proxmark3, directional Wi-Fi assessment hardware, and multi-boot triage drives, run from a standalone VMware Workstation laptop.
- Web development
- Web apps on Cloudflare Workers, including a board game tracker, social media publishing tools, and this site.
Community and leadership
- OzSec Foundation
- Board member for Wichita's annual regional cybersecurity conference.
- Orpheum Performing Arts Centre
- Event volunteer for a historic Wichita theater, and I laser engrave its donor plaques.
- Robotics coaching
- Coached BEST Robotics teams from 2009 to 2019 and VEX Robotics teams from 2017 to 2019 at Circle USD 375, mentoring students through engineering design and competition.
- Golf coaching
- Head boys golf coach at Circle USD 375 from 2017 to 2019.
- Kansas NEA
- President and president-elect of the Kansas NEA Student Program, member of the Kansas NEA Board of Directors, and member of the NEA Advisory Committee on Student Members.
Recognition
- Employee of the Year, Circle USD 375
- Leadership Development Program, Berry Companies, Inc. (2024): nine months, six modules, and visits to each division
- Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and The National Society of Leadership and Success, Cowley College (2025)
- Outstanding State Student Leader, National Education Association
- Pi Gamma Mu Honor Society
Get in touch
Email is the best way to reach me. I'm always glad to hear from recruiters, hiring managers, and anyone working on infrastructure or security problems. My résumé is available on request.