Music classroom to AI lab.

Classroom → Enterprise → Classroom

Through college at Wingate — where I majored in music education — I served as the campus Educational Technology Specialist. After graduating in 2014, my first post-college role was on Belk's eLearning team. That kicked off a decade in enterprise instructional design and technical training, with stops at CPI Security, SnapAV, Anomali, Carbon Black, VMware, Broadcom, and Fast Lane. The work was always teaching — just teaching working engineers instead of students.

I came back to higher ed in 2023 by adjuncting at Central Piedmont. That grew into a full-time instructor role, and then into Department Chair in 2025. From there I returned to Wingate — my alma mater — as adjunct in the Honors program, this time to co-teach applied AI.

Along the way: I led a 12-person content team at VMware responsible for sixteen courses across vSphere, VMware Cloud, and HCX — work that drove $40M in customer revenue in 2022. I modernized the team's process from ADDIE to a SAM-based, agile approach suited to the pace of SaaS. As senior instructor, I led the Carbon Black and VMware on AWS portfolio with a global instructor rating consistently above 4.95.

Today I chair an IT department at Central Piedmont spanning three program areas:

• Cybersecurity — AAS and certificate programs covering security fundamentals, network defense, ethical hacking, and incident response. Industry alignment with Palo Alto Networks and CompTIA Security+.
• Cloud & Networking — Cisco-aligned networking through CCNA, plus AWS, Azure, and Red Hat Linux. Students work in a live on-campus data center as part of the curriculum.
• IT Support — Help desk, end-user computing, hardware, and operating systems. CompTIA A+ and ITIL-aligned, with stackable credentials into Cybersecurity or Cloud & Networking.

Across all three I've built employer collaborations with Red Hat and Palo Alto Networks, redesigned entry-level courses around AI-augmented work, and mentored student data-center workers connecting classroom content to live infrastructure.

My research focus: how AI is reshaping entry-level IT work, and what post-secondary CTE has to do about it.

Career history

• 2023 – present Instructor → Department Chair, Network Management, Cybersecurity, and Cloud & Virtualization Central Piedmont Community College
• 2024–2025 Senior Manager of Solutions Engineering Fast Lane US
• 2023–2024 Leader, Content Development — VMware vSphere Foundation & Cloud Director Broadcom
• 2022–2023 Senior Manager, Technical Content Development VMware
• 2021–2022 Technical Content Development Manager — vSphere / VMware Cloud / HCX / SD-WAN VMware
• 2020–2021 Senior Technical Instructor — Carbon Black & VMware on AWS Lead VMware
• 2019–2020 Technical Trainer Anomali
• 2018–2019 HR Training & Communications Manager SnapAV
• 2015–2018 Mid-Level Manager, Instructional Design CPI Security
• 2014–2015 Program Manager, eLearning Belk
• 2011–2013 Educational Technology Specialist Wingate University

Education

• June 2025 Ed.D., Instructional Design, Systems, and Technology South College
• November 2024 Ed.S., Instructional Design and Technology South College
• February 2023 M.S., IT Management Western Governors University
• August 2018 M.Ed., Instructional Systems Technology, Training and Development UNC Charlotte
• May 2014 B.M.E., Music Education Wingate University

Certifications

• CISSP — Certified Information Systems Security Professional (ISC²)
• Nutanix Certified Professional
• VMware Certified Cloud Infrastructure Administrator 2024
• Double VCP — Data Center Virtualization & Network Virtualization
• VMware Carbon Black Endpoint Protection 2020
• Fortinet FortiGate 7.4 Operator
• CompTIA Network+ ce