About Me

I’ve started this blog as a side project in 2023 as a way to help others achieve success in whatever career they would like. I’m a firm believer that we should all be continually upskilling and reskilling ourselves to maximize our personal potential and happiness. 

I’ve personally gone through four career changes in my more than three decades as a professional. They are all somewhat related to each other so it wasn’t a complete restart. But, they each required a new set of skills and a new way of applying myself.

Fortunately for me, they were all self directed and mostly happened the way I had envisioned. Through these changes I’ve been exposed to many different types of training programs, certification frameworks, and countless software solutions to be successful in, and transition through, these careers. 

It is my goal to provide thoughtful content to help others achieve their career dreams, whatever they may be. This will tell you a bit about my personal journey, so far…

I was born in the 1970’s, grew up in the 1980’s, and finished college in the early 1990’s. I’m a self-reliant Gen-Xer all the way through. This had some advantages in my career development, but it also had some disadvantages. 

It gave me the confidence and opportunity to explore and develop my independence. I spent my youth camping, hiking, riding bikes on long treks, and traveling to many different states with youth groups from church, school, and scouts. 

It also meant that I tended to tackle things on my own. This is great for figuring things out, eventually. However, it took me a long while to learn to work with groups and develop teams to get things done faster and better than I could do on my own.

I went to college for Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics with the initial desire to be an engineer working on space vehicles, stations, and eventual lunar bases. 

As you might imagine, there wasn’t much need for rocket scientists in the early 1990’s. Instead, I was involved in production engineering. This is where you work on the design, development, implementation, operation, and maintenance with the manufacturing environment. 

I started as an intern while still in college working with a defense contractor supporting the manufacturing of torpedoes. From there I moved to supporting the training of line workers for food processing and packaging companies. 

Through these experiences I learned what it was to work in many different professional environments. I was exposed to a number of different software packages that aided in the design and development of production workflows, drafting training images, computer based training, and training programs.

I was also introduced to using computers in a professional setting, networking concepts, and the connection between the Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) infrastructure. This lifelong love of computers and exposure to how they are used in a business setting led me to my first career change.

I left the production engineering field to enter the data recovery one. This utilized my engineering experience and combined it with my interest in computers. The data recovery field is connected with all aspects of digital technology. This covers both the hardware aspects of recovery from damaged systems and the logical side where you recover from human error or programmatic failures from either hardware failures or misconfiguration.

I was primarily on the logical side of the recovery process, but was exposed to much of the work done on the hardware side as well. This means that I worked on hardware RAID arrays, tapes, hard drives, optical disks, and many more. If it was digital we could attempt to get the data back. 

On the logical side, I recovered data from failed arrays, Windows, Macintosh, Novell, Exchange servers, and SQL databases. This taught me the fundamental structures that are used by file systems to store data and how the operating systems manipulated that data for operation. 

I learned many new technical skills in this phase of my career. I also learned the fundamentals of project management, client management, and how to scope and price projects for clients. 

It was the fundamental understanding of how computers function that led to my second career change.

Enter digital forensics. The various fields of forensic sciences rely on the expertise of people to investigate and then testify to their opinions in a court of law. I utilized my expertise in computer operating systems and file structures to work on hundreds of investigations and thousands of different pieces of media. 

This also got me involved in the eDiscovery industry. There is a significant overlap between the digital forensics industry and the needs for data preservation, analysis, and culling for the electronic discovery industry. 

I was also fortunate to begin my career in the digital forensics space before the invention of the smartphone and the proliferation of cloud based computing. This meant that I could develop those skills while the technologies were being developed and deployed for individual and business use. 

This required learning even more new software, hardware, and technical specifications for how systems worked. I had to develop skills working with attorneys and c-suite level executives. This also started to incorporate data analytic technologies for quality control and business intelligence. 

Gaining this deeper understanding of how business is conducted led me to pursue a Masters in Business Administration and transition a third time into a leadership role. 

I started managing people while still working as a digital forensics and eDiscovery expert. Learning about how to motivate people and working through all of the personal issues that can come up during personnel management was a large learning curve. 

Thankfully, I had a number of mentors at this stage of my career to provide advice and guide me as I learned the ropes. There is a lot to know for how to try and build a motivating environment, ensure high quality delivery, and operational consistency throughout an organization. 

This exposed me to even more project management and client management experiences. This was also the start, in earnest, of working cross departmentally for solving mutual problems with different requirements. It started my understanding of negotiation for finding a win-win-win solution to a problem. The two sides of the negotiation need to have solutions that work for both of them, but if it doesn’t also work for the client, then it isn’t a true win. 

Knowing what motivates people and listening to their core concerns helps to develop an understanding of what solutions will work, and which won’t. Then with creative problem solving amongst the team members, you can usually find something that will get the client what they need. 

With the increased connectivity to the internet for businesses and my leadership position in the field of digital forensics, I began to be exposed to the ideas of cyber security and specifically for incident response. This led me to my fourth career change, cyber security professional in digital forensics and incident response. 

This is where I am now, and have been for a number of years. I currently run a practice in the cyber security incident response industry. I lead a worldwide team of experts that runs a 24x7x365 incident response service. 

I have responsibility for the types of services we deliver, the quality of those services, personnel decisions, standards and procedures, business development, and client satisfaction for the entirety of the practice I lead.

I’ve helped people change careers, grow to new responsibilities, upskill and reskill themselves to be able to take on new challenges, performed technology reviews to make determinations if new software or hardware should be considered, and generally supported many people as a mentor as they navigated their own career. 

I feel like I’m at a tipping point in my career. I love what I do, and don’t see stopping for quite some time. But I also feel like I’ve amassed a significant amount of information over the years. I think it is time I shared it. 

I created this blog to do just that. Hopefully, you will find it valuable. 

It is my goal to help you realize your goals for improving yourself and reaching for that next challenge. 

Life isn’t a passive game. Take action. Learn new things. Take on new challenges. Stretch yourself to be better than you were before. 

I want to thank you for making it this far and your interest in learning a bit more about me. I very much want this to be a partnership as I share my experiences over the last few decades. I hope that we can learn from each other and that my insights into what has worked for me will help you to grow in your own career. 

That might be with some words of support, guidance on various training options for development, different kinds of software that I have found to be useful along my path, or suggestions for certifications that may help you to advance and land that next step in your own career journey.

Thank you for reading and thank you for being here. 

Jason