Underserved

Neal Cao started out feeling the pressure common in many families - "You need to become a doctor or an engineer!" After his internship, he knew the medical field was not for him, and saw his brother killing it in software development. After many burst bubbles and industry changes, Neal found himself a principal in a financial services firm. We discuss putting med students in the party dorm, sports car perk programs, and sitting on both sides of the table for an audit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Camby

https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual

https://www.engage2excel.com/

https://www.zensar.com/

https://rsmus.com/services/business-strategy-operations/mergers-acquisitions-advisory.html

Our first former sheriff's deputy, Shadd Schutte brings a unique perspective to Underserved #073. Being a police officer in Wyoming turned out to be good training for managing projects and customers in IT. Shadd talks about his memorable experiences, transitioning between industries, and becoming Agile, as well as motorcycle cruises and spoiling dogs.

Shadd on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaddschutte/

Wyoming Department of Education: Home - Wyoming Department of Education

Laramie County Sheriff's Department: Laramie County (laramiecountywy.gov)

Laramie County Animal Shelter: Cheyenne Animal Shelter | Dogs, Cats, Critters & Care

Episode 072 of Underserved features Brian Durkin, Sr. Group Manager & Head of User Experience, Data & Analytics at BNY Mellon. Brian leveraged his art degree into some web design work but found his true passion was in information architecture. He came to this realization in the middle of an interview, which he politely asked to terminate. Instead, he was offered a new IA job the next day! Also covered: World IA Day, getting fintech to understand IA, and the fun parts of working for Nickelodeon.

Charles Zicari, Brian's first real IA mentor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-zicari-90798/

IxDA: https://ixda.org/

UXPA Boston: http://uxpaboston.org/

World IA Day, Brian started the one for Boston: https://worldiaday.org/

Some of the past speakers of World IA Day Boston:

• Peter Morville - https://www.linkedin.com/in/morville
• Steve Portigal - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveportigal/
• Josh Seiden - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jseiden/
• Abby Covert - https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbytheia/
• Aaron Irizarry - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaroni/
• Todd Zaki-Warfel - https://www.linkedin.com/in/zakiwarfel/
• Dana Chisnell - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-chisnell/
• Christina Wodtke - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinawodtke/

Dr. Colleen Tartow was convinced investigating the heavens was her calling, studying astronomy all the way to a PhD. Once she realized the job market there was tiny and slow to advance, she moved to consulting in data and analytics. Colleen quickly found that data and software suited her and made a career of it. We talk about finding mentors, calligraphy, and the relative merits of a billionaire space race.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-tartow-phd/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CTartow

Starburst: https://www.starburst.io/careers

The Sequel: https://thesequel.substack.com/

Why does John Blythe, our guest for Episode #070, believe in people first at technology companies? It could be his experience building teams, or influencing surgeons to help lower their delivery costs one hip at a time. We discuss making passion learning a business, what it means to be the Director of GIFs and comedic timing, and getting 10x throughput at 10% of the cost. metallica history with dave mustaine and kirk hammet 140db.com - built john mayer's website that inspired John curvolabs.com kyruus.com bit.cloud - for versioned component development thinking in bets others who hate dotnetnuke looool combinedcuriosity.com

Eli Goldberg received a life-changing diagnosis from a sweat test - he found out he had cystic fibrosis. Rather than shy away from it, Eli leaned into sharpening his focus, leaving consulting, and starting a company to help people with similar afflictions drive better medical outcomes. Listen to Episode #069 to hear how that drove Eli to help define the "last mile" of healthcare delivery by a tech giant. https://www.centralwisconsinstatefair.com/p/other/worlds-largest-round-barn https://www.uwalumni.com/news/the-onion/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02445136 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyo

Kevin Jarnot, CIO of Uptime Institute, is our guest for episode #068. Kevin proves there is no set path to becoming a CIO. He was interrogated by the Secret Service in college, his band opened for Run DMC, and he ran a financial services company off the cable modem in his basement. Nowadays Kevin is a thought leader for some of the largest data centers in existence. Hear Kevin's story and transformation in our latest Underserved episode! The incredible Franklin Ace 1000 computer - http://oldcomputers.net/ace1000.html Buffalo BBS scene - https://www.reddit.com/r/Buffalo/comments/gwas9/who_remembers_the_wny_bbs_scene/ WWIV BBS software: https://www.wwivbbs.org/ Some band photos: http://www.jarnot.com/facade/musicawards_1_lg.jpg http://www.jarnot.com/facade/musicawards_2_lg.jpg http://www.jarnot.com/facade/group-photo1.jpg http://www.jarnot.com/facade/musicawards_4_lg.jpg Mentions of Nest Egg: https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1995/07/31/financially-plugged-in/ https://news.microsoft.com/1997/11/05/make-the-world-wide-web-your-oyster/

Our guest from Episode #067, Parag Shah, foresaw the death of penmanship - something he happily announced at age 8. That didn't save him from having to write a page of QBasic code each day before he could go out to play! Topics discussed include how serious you get about studying when you are paying your own tuition, decoupling storage and compute, and handling turnover at the top. https://learn.dvorak.nl/ https://www.umass.edu/living/residence/northeast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necco https://www.forcepoint.com/cyber-edu/shadow-it

Episode #066's guest is Matthew Wood, Deputy CTO, Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Before ruling the IT end of Massachusetts roadways, Matthew grew up with technology in the United Kingdom. Some things were the same (the quest to build and play games), others very different (PC makers like the Alan Michael Sugar Trading company, aka Amstrad). We discuss differences managing when your workforce is unionized and in the public sector, and searching for the balance between being a team player and calling out bad ideas. Broomstones (curling location) - http://www.broomstones.com/ - you can rent them out for fun corporate events Coventry (where Matt grew up) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry Sinclair ZX81 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81 Amstrad 6128 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_CPC Acorn Electron - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Electron

Episode #065 features Pete Langois. Pete's first buffer overflow exploit in 8th grade earned him a trip to the vice principal's office, but starting his own BBS out of his bedroom earned him a job. We talk about trade shows including MacWorld, Star Wars including action figures, and the ROI of investing in yourself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 https://www.apple.com/leadership/phil-schiller/ https://www.derrynh.org/ https://www.skillshare.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-digital-photography/ https://www.londonderrynhpd.gov/189/Police-Explorers