I wasn’t a stellar student in K-12. Actually, I was horrible. But that was then.

I built my career with education, experience and certifications. I wasn’t born into it. I built it. Hence,

“Doug Was Built Not Born“

My Journey:

Education

• Attended three+ years of technical training while on active duty. This included communications, cryptography, and radar – involving in-depth electronic and data processing theory.
• Completed multiple tiers of leadership training as I advanced in my career.
• Six years undergrad and grad education, earning an MBA with an emphasis in Finance and BA in Business.
• Earned eight (8) professional certifications. They include CISSP, CEH, PMP, CISM, CISA, PSM, ITIL, and CFCM (click to view). All earned without boot camps. No one helped me. The CISSP, CEH, PMP, CISM, AND CISA are HIGHLY recommended by many reputable organizations, including Robert Half (click to read). I’ve previously held CCNA, Security+, and Network+ certs, but let them expire as they were no longer required for my portfolio.

Experience

• 21-year Naval Career – Served as an Electronics Technician (ET). I worked on communications systems critical to national security. Also served as a Production Officer, Operations Officer, Project Manager, and even a Public Affairs Officer.
  
• Worked in a specialized communication program as a U.S. Government contractor. Provided Special Forces communicators with a variety of robust communication systems. The systems (and I supported) included everything, the Satellite Communication (SATCOM) terminal, routers, switches, call managers, laptops…. everything. I fielded the systems globally. Managed operations and projects for an additional five years before leaving the program.
• Deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq five times to perform independent program operations.
• Personally selected to forward deploy to support the launch of two new – highly visible systems and a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) project.
• Spent five years as a Technical Project Manager for a special purpose “Not to Fail” communications package operated by Special Forces communicators afloat.
• Maintained a Top Secret security clearance most my military and DoD contracting career.
• Achieved the status of Subject Matter Expert (SME) in every technical role I held.
• Lived overseas for 13 years while on active duty.
• Contracted Cybersecurity Project Manager for the Department of the Interior (DOI). I managed a variety of projects and initiatives to included CyberArk, SailPoint, Microsoft Azure, Dashboard as a Service (DBaaS) and Nessus Network Monitor (NNM)/Tenable Vulnerability Management (TVM).

At Home Geek Stuff

• I have a Protectli firewall running pfSense. I have several packages filtering traffic.
• My MacBook runs three Operating Systems (OSs): macOS, Windows, and Linux.
  
• My PC runs VMWare hosting a variety of Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Kali).

Activities

• Completed five marathons, over 50 half-marathons, many 10Ks, and a century (100 mile) bike race.
  
• I enjoy traveling with my family – even if it’s just to the beach.
• I enjoy ethical hacking, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), lock picking, and working with AI.
  
• Amateur (Ham) Radio: Operator Extra Class. Highest license available. Examination required advanced technical knowledge and the ability (at the time) to copy Morris Code. Obviously I”m not tapping code now.