1. What is your career history?

I worked as a General Manager of Developer Platform & Tools for Microsoft, was Vice President for the Software Systems Division at Juniper Networks, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Product Management at Meridium, and Corporate Officer and Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at GE Digital.

2. What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

If you find a project where you’re not being successful, fail fast, learn from the experience, pass along the learnings to others, and move forward quickly.

3. What made you want to become a member of the GO Virginia council?

If you look at GO Virginia Region 2, which spreads from Lynchburg to the West Virginia border, there’s a lot of opportunity and a lot of incredible talent in the region. GO Virginia is an opportunity to work with like-minded individuals who want to promote growth and enterprise in this area.

4. What is your favorite part of being a GO Virginia Council member?

Collaborating, listening, learning from my peers in the region. We have incredible talents and mentors here in the region who just want to help. Getting to hang out with folks like Ray Smoot, John Provo, William Fralin, Amy Ankrum, Dr. Michael Friedlander, Beverly Dalton, John Dooley, and a host of others across the region has been a great learning experience. All of these individuals have a keen interest in Ut Prosim and how they give back to the community, which I admire and love.

5. What skills have you learned from being on the GO Virginia council?

In the realm of commercial software we ran very fast; we made decisions and we moved forward very quickly. The GO Virginia process has caused me to sit back, reflect, listen, learn, and take different perspectives. It’s the balance of taking what I’ve learned in private industry and putting it to use in a more public sector. I learn something new every day working with these incredible individuals.

6. What is the most challenging part of being a GO Virginia Council Member?

The number of new ideas and opportunities. The challenge is to vet through all of the great ideas and pick ones that will help us grow the region faster. Rather than a challenge, I would characterize it as an opportunity to sit back, listen, and learn from everything going on and look at all the great companies and people we have in the region.

7. How has GOVA had to change due to COVID-19?

I don’t feel we’ve missed a beat leveraging various teleconferencing software like Zoom. I do think what we probably all miss is the social interaction, of being face to face and talking to each other about various ideas but through Ray’s leadership we’ve embraced the moment and moved forward. In terms of projects the region was able to adjust to focus on opportunities that came up with COVID-19, such as some of the testing work Dr. Michael Friedlander is doing. I feel the Commonwealth was very gracious in allowing us to change our focus slightly to look at some of these concerns. In many ways, I feel Region 2 leads the Commonwealth in many of these initiatives in terms of wanting to get things done and taking advantage of the great working relationships with the universities we have in the region, including Virginia Tech, Radford, Roanoke College, Lynchburg Univeristy, Hollins, Liberty, Virginia Western, Central Virginia, and New River Valley Community College. We have a wealth of great colleges and people here to leverage.

8. What are GO Virginia’s plans for the future?

Our goal in Region 2 is to meet the mandate of creating new higher playing jobs in the region. From what I’m seeing and hearing, I think the state is looking for us to do more in terms of a leadership role. There are great opportunities for us moving forward to expand not just what we’re doing here but expand that state footprint; there’s a lot of commonalities between parts of the state in healthcare, high tech manufacturing, IT and the new 5G initiatives from telecommunications. As long as we continue to deliver and bring in good jobs, I see a bright future for GO Virginia.

9. What hobby would you want to try if time or money was not an issue?

I’ve been very blessed that my career was my hobby. I love writing software. I spend a lot of time these days on big data and data analytics. Now that I’m retired, I want to spend time doing things that I didn’t have a chance to do before. One of those is to be more musically inclined. I would love to be a pianist, about half as good as Ray Smoot. I want to spend more time flying and sailing once the COVID-19 restrictions lift.

10. What is the most memorable trip you have been on?

I think one of my more memorable trips was to India. We were visiting one of the new IIT campuses in the country. I’m fascinated with the culture and the people of India, the various religions, and beliefs. We were coming back from this trip and there was a temple about 30 km out of town. I noticed a large number of people around the temple and I asked my guide what it represented. He told me a story of how these people were praying at this temple to get a work visa to the United States.