Growing up in Western New York, I started my career working for Real Time Enterprises (RTE), which did contract work for large companies. As an RTE Project Engineer, I enjoyed working on a wide range of projects at several well-known companies including Eastman Kodak Company and Johnson & Johnson. A few years later, my next career jump found me working for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) at Xerox headquarters in Webster, New York, as a System Administrator and Desktop Support specialist.


After impressing a complete stranger with my research and graphical ingenuity (a good story if we ever chat), I soon found myself occasionally sharing an elevator with Larry Ellison at Oracle Corporation Headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. Starting at Oracle in April of 2000, I was able to experience the energy and glory days of a major IT company in Silicon Valley before the Tech Crash of 2001.


At Oracle over the years, I took on any role they needed me in, often tackling challenging roles with no prior experience. The Build/Release Engineer just quit before a major release? No problem. I quickly absorbed Oracle's proprietary source control system, taught myself shell scripting to manage the build scripts and came up to speed within 2 weeks as the new Build/Release Engineer. I've given myself the unofficial title "Wearer of Many Hats" at Oracle. Some of the hats I've worn have read, System Administrator, QA Engineer, Test Automation Engineer, Dev/Ops Engineer, Product Support Specialist, Developer, System Architect, Team Leader, Scrum Master, Tool Designer, UI Designer, Product Owner, Infrastructure Specialist, and more.


Today at Oracle, I've come full circle back to Project Engineering. I am again enjoying the opportunity to work on a wide range of projects on a PaaS Team focused on UI and Tool Development for the numerous Oracle Cloud Service Teams. The main difference now being that I am leading the projects, mentoring my teammates, and actively contributing in all areas of the projects.