Principal Consultant

Obsidian Availability Solutions | September 2016 – December 2018

Role Summary

Principal consulting and startup leadership role focused on resilient infrastructure, cloud productivity, identity, PKI, unified communications, managed-services strategy, vendor partnerships, and customer-facing security governance. The public summary keeps older customer details generalized while preserving the progression into regulated cloud, identity, and security architecture.

• Co-founded an IT consulting firm and established strategic partnerships with Microsoft, ServiceNow, Palo Alto, Dell, HPE, and other vendors within two years, expanding the service portfolio available to customer environments.
• Secured Microsoft Tier 1 / Direct CSP partner status, enabling stronger managed cloud and security offerings while improving the firm’s ability to support customer adoption directly.
• Built rapid customer and tenant onboarding patterns for managed-services lifecycle entry, standardizing implementation strategy so new customers could move from sale to operating service more predictably.
• Designed early Azure AD lifecycle and entitlement patterns for internal and customer tenants, connecting onboarding, role changes, offboarding, group-based access, and delegated CSP/MSP administration into repeatable managed-service controls.
• Developed a per-unit managed-services cost model that made contract pricing more accurate, connecting technical delivery scope to financial sustainability instead of relying on broad estimates.
• Implemented hybrid-cloud, productivity, collaboration, communication, identity, and security systems across customer environments, including Azure subscriptions, virtual networks, Hyper-V, System Center, Exchange, Skype, SharePoint, Teams, and security policies.
• Implemented hybrid identity and federation foundations across Microsoft cloud customer environments, aligning directory synchronization, access boundaries, and tenant onboarding practices so customers could adopt cloud services without losing operational control of identity risk.
• Led a 16,000+ user Skype for Business Online and Cloud PBX migration across 67 sites, consolidating more than 100 telecom contracts while delivering end-user training and unified communications support.
• Implemented an Enterprise PKI hierarchy with an offline root CA, HSM-backed key storage, and certificate issuance for 6,000+ users and devices, strengthening authentication and regulatory-aligned identity controls.
• Designed certificate templates, enrollment paths, and AD CS administrative RBAC for general, SCCM, and RADIUS use cases, turning certificate-based authentication from a one-time infrastructure build into an operable identity-control service.
• Designed and implemented privileged-access operating patterns across internal and customer environments, including Tier 0-style separation, PAW/SAW practices, JEA, and resource PIM concepts where organizational maturity supported hands-on enforcement.
• Led 24/7/365 critical-situation response and executive advisory work, translating availability, security, and business-continuity risks into practical remediation plans for customer and internal environments.
• Authored, published, and maintained security policies, procedures, designs, and reports for hybrid-cloud, identity, and productivity environments, giving customer and internal teams operational documentation instead of one-time project artifacts.
• Led a small-business digital-transformation project spanning marketing presence, POS, finance management, CRM, and integrated web solutions, connecting technical modernization to revenue, operations, and customer engagement.
• Oversaw staff, vendors, strategic partners, external audits, performance reviews, product and service portfolios, scopes of work, and pricing, tying consulting architecture to accountable business operations.
• Established program-management, communications, service-delivery, and implementation standards so customer engagements could scale without relying on informal founder-level intervention for every decision.
• Evaluated technical products, services, and strategic partnerships across cloud, security, high-availability, and managed-services domains, keeping the service portfolio current while avoiding unnecessary vendor lock-in.