Millsaps College
Jackson, MS
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Minor in Business Administration
2003
Else School of Management at Millsaps College
Jackson, MS
Masters in Business Administration (MBA)
Concentration in Management
2005
I am currently employed as an “interface specialist,” which loosely translates to a sr./lead analyst position. I say loosely because it incorporates so much more than what a typical analyst would do, but most people are not familiar with the title. I work on everything from highly programmatic interfaces between systems to SQL servers and project management. I serve as a senior technical staff member that is responsible for manage the full development cycle of enterprise system integration, including the creation of formal functional requirements, technical design specifications, development of test plans, interface thread programming and maintenance. I am also the direct partner for two hospital departments.
I am a member of the Baptist Employee Advisory Team. I have participated in focus groups for our marketing material. I have worked on projects that have spanned over a year’s time. In my current position, I have had extensive project management responsibility and I am currently working on becoming PMP certified. In the next few months, I will be taking over the role of SQL Server DBA and getting a MCTS SQL DBA certification.
My duties changed somewhat when I moved from Corporate Logistics to IT. I was still responsible for the AIX servers that ran the distribution centers, but we were down to two instead of six. I handed over the capital budget duties to our director and added additional web responsibilities. When I arrived in IT, I worked with two other teams to help with intranet web based applications and created several for our own team’s use. I worked with a group that was created to help introduce newer technology, such as .net, to other teams. The main application that I supported for the distribution centers was bought out around this time and we started working with the new owners to upgrade the software. I worked extensively with them to reduce the upgrade price from over one million dollars to less than six hundred thousand. I was participated in leadership and career development training offered at work.
In the last semester of graduate school, I came to the realization that the bank had over promised and under delivered, so I decided it was time to change jobs. Through a contact, I found out about an opening at the Saks Inc Operations Center, which was based in Jackson. It did not take long before I was hired as a Manager of Systems Support, working for the small, highly diverse team know as Corporate Logistics. If it related to getting goods to the store, we did it. We were part of every aspect inside the distribution centers, from working on flow problems to ensuring systems were running properly. In a short time, I became responsible for managing six AIX servers that ran the six distribution centers and I was also placed in charge of managing the capital budget requirements for our department.
Initially, Saks owned a number of regional department stores, as well as the Saks 5th Ave and Off 5th stores. About a year after I came aboard, they started to divest themselves of the regional stores. I was tasked with heading some of our departments efforts in the transitions of systems and services to the companies we were selling the regional stores to. This was no small job as it required intradepartmental partnerships and cross country communication to insure that the customers saw no disruptions. Unfortunately, this also reduced the company’s earnings by half and a staff reduction was also necessary to right size the number of employees working. The decision was made to let most of the department go. Several of us were deemed essential to operations and were retained. We were moved to the IT department.
Shortly before graduation, I decided that I would be better equipped for the workforce if I had a masters degree in business. Millsaps happened to have a highly rated MBA program, so I stayed in Jackson to attend school. Even though I knew the course load would be heavy, I felt that I needed to work to limit my financial obligations as well as gain some “real” experience.
I qualified for a research position with the school and I spent my free hours in the library combing through publications for relevant articles on outsourcing. I would then read them, sort them, and summarize them for the professor I was working for as he was working on a paper to present later that year.
At the same time, my other job was as a teller for Regions (AmSouth at the time) Bank. There was agreement that the position would lead to others in the bank, if I so desired. I felt that starting on the ground floor and working my way up would be the best way to gain the most experience about the organization. I certainly learned how to think fast on my feet when dozens of customers all wanted something different at the same time and that being responsible for auditing your peers is a humbling processes.
These positions also taught me that it is best to dig into every matter thoroughly and finalize contracts before agreeing to them.
During my final two years of my undergrad degree, I spent my summers in Jackson so that I could attend summer school. To help support myself, I took a job in the school’s computer lab, working as a monitor and troubleshooting technical problems that arose. I continued this position throughout the normal school year as well.
I also spent several months as an AutoCAD technician where I learned to use AutoCAD’s Overlay program to input data from parcel maps so that it could be queried for map look-up purposes.
While neither position was exactly challenging, they taught me how to balance multiple projects with my school workload and emphasized the need to be able to manage myself as they were largely unsupervised.
I spent the summers of 2000 and 2001 working as a field intern for Monsanto. This was one of the most varied positions I have ever held. I was effectively working for 5 different people in four states (TX, OK, KS, and CO) with positions in research and sales. Part of my time was spent doing research on test plots and the resulting data, planting and harvesting the plots as well. Other times I responsible for delivering loads of chemical and seeds to customers in remote locations. I was tasked with creating educational material and putting together presentations on new several different technology projects that were rolled out while I was there. This was my first experience working with an interdisciplinary team, allowing me to see how every person’s actions contributed to the big picture.
I don’t have the exact day or age that I started working, but it seems that it was sometime in Jr. High when I started my lawn mowing service. I started with a few accounts around the block and then worked my way further out of the area. In those days, before I had a car or license, I would simply push my mower, gas cans, and trimmer up to about two miles for my furthest customer. That was how I spent most summers until around 14, when, continuing with mowing, I took over grounds keeper at First United Methodist Church. For the next several years, I kept the grounds watered, mowed, free of trash, etc.
As soon as I was able to drive, legally, and be employed at a “real” job, I became a proud employee of our new (first and only back home) McDonald’s. I did that through the summer and into the first of the school year, until school and football practice started to take a considerable bit more of my time.
The following summer, I worked a variety of odd jobs ranging from two months spent shingling roofs to helping area farmers put in test plots. The last two summers before college, I followed up with one of the farmers and was his sole, full time employee. I spent countless hours plowing, planting, harvesting, and just about any other task you can imagine in a farming environment.
All of these early job taught me valuable lessons in hard work and responsibility. Whether it was learning that you have to follow through on committing to mowing a yard, every Saturday morning while your friends were off playing or that 100 hours a week during harvest was the only way to get the job done, these lessons have been invaluable in defining the way I have grown in my professional career.