Meet Our Team
Our Collective Expertise Driving Our Vision Forward
Lynn
Back in the day, she ran the Southeastern Technical Training region for CompUSA serving corporate and government clients and then helped her husband John start his financial services business. A busy mother of three daughters, grandmother and avid philanthropist, you will often find her with her girls at Civil Air Patrol or visiting at UCF.
Jeff
Jeff brings several decades of experience within the technology training and certification industry from CertNexus, Logical Operations, and other top training companies. Jeff works with client services and marketing to assist in better serving current and future ATA clients. He is data driven and produces innovative and effective solutions. Jeff is an avid cyclist and all around sports enthusiast.
Liz
Liz came to us from a large national courseware provider, Logical Operations. Now in her 7th year with ATA she skillfully onboards and manages our 160+ instructors nationwide and overseas. A talented vocalist, you will often find her performing locally in Rochester or recording in the studio on weekends. She is also a proud mother to her son Leo!
Matt
Matt joined ATA after his SkillBridge Internship, as the IT administrator and to manage Government compliance and reporting requirements. He brings 12 years of experience in operations, logistics and information technology to the team from his time in the Army and Army Reserves. Matt spends his free time with his wife and two boys fishing and watching sports.
Bailey
Bailey brings nearly a decade of experience directly managing network teams, planning and executing cyber operations, and developing security strategies in both the private and public sector. Bailey has served as a security consultant for Fortune 100 companies and has also been a curriculum developer for both offensive and defensive security programs. She currently manages ATA’s Asymmetric Training Group.
Carrie
Carrie came to us with a lengthy history in the training industry, specializing in digital marketing, student outreach, and partner alliance program management. She is working to expand our already successful Partner Alliance Program, equipping MSPs, integrators and other training companies to leverage our award-winning global training offerings. Make sure to check on how her daughter’s basketball team is doing – she is the Head Coach!
Lawrence
After his SkillBridge Internship, Lawrence returned to help transform ATA with his 19+ years of course design and training management within the USAF SOF community. His professional accomplishments include operations management, instructional design, eLearning, and staff development. Truth be told he would much rather be fly fishing or traveling with his wife.
Laura
Laura joined ATA as a seasoned business development, operations & program management professional, with decades of training and service experience. She manages our Florida National Guard Educational Dollars for Duty, Army, USCG & USAF Credentialing & MyCAA programs with the utmost in professionalism and student service. As a Navy Veteran’s daughter, she is committed to the mission, and works diligently to equip our Armed Forces with IT and cyber skills!
Kim
Kim comes to ATA with extensive training industry experience, having spent years serving and supporting customers at Logical Operations and CertNexus. She is an instrumental program coordinator on our Client Services team. She specializes in assisting all of our clients and students nationwide to help them achieve and succeed with their certification goals. Her attention to detail and her calm and quiet spirit is a blessing to our students!
Rebecca
Rebecca’s professional experience varies from TV Production Assistant to Director of Education for Classical Conversations. Spending decades home educating their four children, Rebecca now brings her passion for education and administration to ATA. Their family recently moved to the Niceville area so that her husband could take on a PCA pastoral position. She now serves our team administratively and helps to manage our Fort Walton classroom.
Patrick
Patrick came to ATA after one of his sons successfully trained and certified on multiple courses with us. He was so impressed, that he wanted to join ATA and contribute to the difference we are making in the training industry. As a retired senior military officer and seasoned program manager, Patrick has over 27-years of U.S. Coast Guard tactical, operational, and strategic experience in leading complex maritime response and military operations world-wide.
Terry comes to ATA with over 25 years of experience in Cyber, Communications, Information Technology, Electronic Warfare, Space Operations, Information Warfare, Multi-Domain Operations, and Digital Targeting. Terry has already developed impactful custom training programs for our corporate and military clients, taking ATA to the next level for custom course development and delivery.
Jay
Our lead CompTIA instructor, Jay, has the unique ability to take students with little to no IT experience and impart a credible understanding of IT security theory to them. An invested father to his sons Jacob and Ben, you might find them traveling, making music together or hanging out at the theme parks in Orlando. He also loves spending time and traveling with his wife Jess, a smart and fun Brit.
Jake
Jake currently leads UPMC’s Red Team, executing offensive security engagements such as infrastructure penetration tests, web app pentests, purple team engagements, and PCI pentests. He also brings “purple” team talent, with SOC and compliance testing experience. He is a key leader on ATA’s Asymmetric Training Group team.
Mike
Mike is one of our select instructors within ATA’s Asymetric Training Group, and is currently a Senior Penetration Tester with Centric Consulting, overseeing highly technical projects, comprised mostly of web application and network penetration tests. His advanced penetration skills have made him an incredible asset on the ATA instructor team.
Robel
Robel is the Principal Security Researcher at Blackpoint Cyber, where he leads the Adversary Pursuit Group’s threat research team with over 8 years of professional experience. His expertise in vulnerability research, reverse engineering malware, and proof-of-concept development is backed by a decade of service as a US Army cyber officer. Robel is skilled in penetration testing and red teaming & holds prestigious Offsec OSEE, OSED, OSWE, OSEP.
Mike
Mike is an entrepreneur, cybersecurity professional, and corporate trainer. He brings over 10 years of corporate training experience and has built two successful companies. He is a freelance penetration tester and holds the OSCP, GSEC, and GCIH.
Taylor
As an Information Security Officer in the Financial Sector, Taylor’s role is centered on ensuring customers stay protected and their funds stay secured. With extensive experience in building and monitoring secure networks, He focuses on maintaining defensible environments with SIEMs, EDRs, NDRs, Firewalls, or just plain old raw logs. He’s blue team by day and the red team by night, staying up to date on the latest attack methods to ensure early detection and mitigation. He is an integral part of the ATG.
Mathew
Mathew is a lead penetration tester with a focus on critical US infrastructure. He served in the Navy specializing in Cyber Defense as a host and network analyst, as well as some time in exploit analysis. As a member of the ATG, Mathew has a wealth of experience in Active Directory exploitation, and experience in web exploitation as both an operator, and as an occasional volunteer instructor at Towson University.
Michael
A cybersecurity educator and practitioner with over two decades of experience, Michael currently serves as a cyberspace operator and trainer for the U.S. Army. He is also a trusted partner with Offensive Security, where he was the curriculum designer for the PEN-100 course and created many of the dynamic CTF-style exercises now in PEN-200. Michael holds a Master’s in Computer Science from Princeton University and his OSCP, OSDA, and GXPN certifications, and is a seasoned ATG instructor.
Kyser
Kyser is a U.S. Air Force veteran with over six years of cyber experience. He currently works as a full-time penetration tester, conducting internal and external network penetration tests and web application assessments for many clients across industries. He holds 13 certifications, including OSCP and CISSP.
Dr. Brian
Dr. Brian Salk, former Michigan National Guard, has written content for the Third, Fourth, and Sixth (release date: 2017) editions of the PMBOK® Guide, the de facto standard for running effective projects. He has successfully published a line of PMI approved courseware that he brings to the classroom. He is also an expert in Agile and ITIL, and teaches our management, leadership and coaching courses as well.
Kat
Kat is a dedicated cybersecurity engineer who works toward a functional system supporting confidentiality, integrity, and availability. She brings true practitioner talent to the ATA classroom as the Principal Information Security Systems Manager for Sandia National Laboratories, and was a former Senior Cloud Architect and Cyber Assurance Engineer.
Tarik
Tarik is a Microsoft Certified Trainer with over two decades of experience in the technology training industry. He has taught and consulted for a wide range of organizations throughout the US, and has experience in traditional classroom training, virtual classroom training, and content development. Tarik holds certifications covering a broad range of Microsoft desktop, Server and Cloud technologies. He specializes in creating an inviting environment that allows adult learners to bring real world examples into the conversation.
Victor
Victor specializes in ITIL certification classes as well as CompTIA certification classes. He also has conducted Azure classes as a long time MCT (Microsoft Certified Trainer – since NT4) and AWS classes. Victor has taught countless clients in the United States as well as for clients in several countries in Africa. He has run classes with students on multiple continents and countries both in person and virtually. Victor has a passion for helping candidates of all skill levels increase their knowledge and certifications.
Eric
Eric is an esteemed technology instructor with an extensive career spanning over two decades, during which he has imparted knowledge in a diverse array of subjects such as ITIL, DevOps, DevSecOps, Agile, SAFe, and computer programming. His background is equally impressive, having honorably served as a Weather Officer in the United States Air Force (USAF). Following his distinguished military career, he transitioned into academia as an adjunct university instructor, further showcasing his commitment to education.
Jack
Jack Maher is an experienced senior executive and seasoned consultant, author, and educator. He is a recognized DevOps expert, having implemented at large scale, coached in multiple industries, and is a certified trainer (DevOps Foundation, DevSecOps, DevOps Leader, and Site Reliability Engineering) and has been named as an Ambassador to the USA by the DevOps Institute. Jack has been identified as #28 on the list of Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Culture by Thinkers360.com.
Peter
Peter has 25 years of experience in IT as an enterprise Microsoft architect and administrator for various Federal agencies including the DOJ, DOD, Department of State, and US Patent and Trademark Office. He holds several CompTIA certifications including Sec+, CySA+ and Pentest+ and EC Council CEH, CHFI, and CND. He’s an amateur keyboard player who loves jamming with family and friends and hiking/biking with his dog Ralph during the cooler winter months.
Don
Don comes to us with over 15+ years of experience leading diverse IT & security operations in the USAF. He has a background in program management, cyber operations planning and execution, and Advanced C4 Solutions helps Don bring real world experience to impart to his students. Don teaches a broad range of subjects and certification courses for us, ranging from CMMC, CASP and CISSP to programming and pen testing. He is an incredible asset to our CMMC instructor team!
Eric
Eric is an analytics consultant and trainer. He has helped hundreds of users use Tableau Desktop and Prep to clean, shape, and ultimately visualize data to gain insights. He can also use client data to build holistic dashboards to gain insight into their operations. Outside of work Eric travels (ask to see his Australia photos), runs, and practices Karate. He ran my first half-marathon in 2017 and the New York Marathon in 2018. Final time was 5:45, if anyone asks.
Dan
Dan has more than 30 years of strategic, operating and financial management experience in high technology companies. His expertise and influence have made him a recognized leader in the industry, where he plays a key role in several national identity superiority initiatives and advises companies, organizations and government agencies.
Jim
Jim has more that 26 years of extensive managerial and leadership experience. Jim has a Dual Masters in Human Resources Development & Computer Resources and Information Systems Management, Webster University. In addition, he attained a Specialized Associates Degree as a Computer Network Engineer.
Laurence
Laurence is an ISACA Accredited Trainer – (CISA), (CISM), (CRISC). Information Technology, Information Security, Risk Management, and I.T. Auditing Trainer and Instructor.
Hank
Hank has over 30 years of experience developing solutions, and teaching administrators, engineers, architects, developers, and managers. Certifications include: Security+, Cybersecurity First Responder (CFR), Cyber Security Analyst+ (CySA+), PenTest+, and CompTIA Advanced Security Practitioner (CASP+). CertNexus’ Americas Instructor of the Year 2023.
Chris
Chris hails from Georgia, and is our lead Microsoft MCT and expert in all things MCSA and MCSE. He is also a CompTIA Security+ and Linux+ expert as well. A father of three daughters in their teen and college years, he is busy traveling with family and balancing the busy schedules of his wife and daughters. He and his wife just celebrated their big anniversary in Hawaii.
Gene
Gene has over 40 years’ experience delivering world-class training solutions, and guiding, mentoring, and leading individuals and teams to successful resolutions, taking great pride in going above and beyond to tailor learning solutions to help the learners achieve long-term growth and attain competitive advantage. Gene’s areas of training expertise now focuses on certification boot camps for Lean Six Sigma and Project Management (PMP/CAPM).
Dave
Dave is a CMMC Level 3 Provisional Assessor, CMMC Provisional Instructor, CISSP, CAP, Security+, and PMP certified cybersecurity lead instructor, skilled in securing information systems to achieve information confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Dave’s focus is governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) using information security frameworks established by NIST and CMMC. A former TX Army National Guard Lt. Col. overseeing 5,000 network users, he was a natural fit for our team!
Scott
Scott is an experienced IT professional with over 20 years of industry experience in operations, network management implementation and management, client migrations, and training. As an instructor, Scott specializes in AWS services, as well as various Microsoft and CompTIA offerings. His teaching integrates blended modalities, from the traditional classroom to online virtual learning using a variety of platforms.
Andrew
Andrew is a true talent with over 20 years experience, recognized for his technical aptitude, product expertise, and outstanding presentation delivery. He has vast knowledge of Cisco routers, switches, firewalls, and security appliances and TCP/IP network infrastructure. He is also one of our talented Python instructors. He spends evenings and weekends helping to run a restaurant that he and his best friend just opened – great food and good beer!
Shane
Shane’s passion is Information Technology, IT Security, and teaching. He has accumulated over 20 years of IT management, technical, and Cyber-Security experience and loves to bring his experience to the classroom. As the owner of his own MSP, he brings real world examples of implementing effective IT solutions while maintaining appropriate levels of information system security to the classroom.
Stephen
Mr. Padilla spent the first 25 years of his adult life in the US Air Force as a 9S100 Scientific Applications Specialist, the career field nicknamed “The Enlisted Scientists” by the Air Force ISR Agency. He has an Associate of Applied Science degree in Scientific Analysis Technology, and a Bachelor of Applied Science in the same, plus a Master’s degree in an unrelated field. In addition to academic degrees, he holds multiple certifications from CompTIA: ITF+, A+, Network+, Security+, and CySA+, as well as Project+ and Cloud Essentials+.
John
John is our go to guy for all things C#, Javascript, Python, Linux, Red Hat and Blockchain. Retired Air Force, by day he is an IT Specialist at NASA, taking his extra time to teach for us. He is loved by students for his passion and willingness to create tools and build his own labs for many of his classes. He and his wife have been known to take four week hiking trips to sleep in hammocks, true lovers of nature and the outdoors!
Chris
An Innovative, hands-on Security process owner offering Fortune 100 leadership. Expertise areas include Leading Information Security Strategy and Vision, Creating Roadmaps that Protect the Confidentiality of Highly Sensitive Data, and Enabling and Securing the Business. As the initial Director for the CMMC-AB Board of Directors, Chris created and delivered all awareness training for 150 provisional CMMC auditors supporting the DoD.
Martin
Martin is a seasoned and successful Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), specializing in SharePoint, Microsoft 365, JavaScript and database design. He especially loves creating custom courses for our clients. Both he and his wife come from a lengthy lineage of Army veterans and both volunteer for Civil Air Patrol. They have two sons and you can often find them out Carolina Shag dancing as a couple!
Brian
Brian is our lead instructor in the areas of Agile, Scrum and Lean Six Sigma. He is Lean Project Management Certified, a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, a Scrum Master and a Kaizen Facilitator. Brian comes from a background of project management and process improvement in the healthcare industry. A dynamic teacher, he brings real world examples and experience to the classroom.
Altaf
In addition to 5+ years of AWS experience, Altaf has been an AWS Authorized Champion Instructor and Google Cloud Authorized Trainer for the past four years and one year, respectively. He has spent 5000+ hours in the classroom delivering courses to multiple enterprises, including those from Fortune 100 and Global 100. Altaf’s focus on customer satisfaction marries well with the ATA culture!
Royal
Starting with a Bachelor and Masters degree in IT from the University of Maryland, Royal also has 36 years of IT, security and cyber experience with the USAF, L3, DoD and SAIC. His experience includes roles such as Cyberspace Operator and security and RMF for USAF space systems. With a vast breadth of over 30 certifications, he not only loves teaching, but remains a constant student himself!
Ken
Ken is a 20 year USAF avionic systems veteran. From 2002 through 2016 he continued to build his Cisco and CompTIA certification mastery. Since late in 2017 he has served as a DoD support contractor in roles within cybersecurity, client systems administration, network administration, functional systems administration, systems integration, and client systems engineering.
Rob
A passionate IT consultant and instructor with 15 years experience, Rob is one of our key Cisco Certified Instructors and CompTIA experts. Proven at building internal and external customer value, he is known for communicating professionally and effectively. Are you into fast cars? He is also an auto expert and a prior professional driver and motorsport consultant!
Leza
As a seasoned multi-decade Microsoft Certified Trainer, Leza takes the lead on all of our Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office application training. Accustomed to out of the box customized training, Leza has tailored our Microsoft training deliveries and wowed our clients, they often try and hire her after their training cohort! A consummate professional, Leza is a key contributor to our team, and an inspiration to our students!
Denis
Denis is a service management and DevOps evangelist who enjoys collaborating with students to help them learn ways they can improve the value they deliver for their organizations. His over 30 years of experience includes application development, operational support, service desk management, as well as IT architecture and strategy. Denis also enjoys roller coasters and SCUBA diving.
Steve
As an Information Technology Senior Manager and Instructor/Consultant in multiple business sectors, Steve has had great success as a manager and program manager for software development and service management responsibilities. His credentials include progressive responsibility with documented success at various organizational levels working with and leading technical and management teams in project mgmt., software development, systems engineering, configuration and quality mgmt.
Chris
Chris is our data privacy expert and delivers all of our IAPP courses. He has trained technical employees at agencies including NASA, NSA, and NIH. Over the course of his career, he has delivered over 5K hours of technical training to hundreds of employees from over twenty Federal agencies in the Washington D.C. area. He brings over 25 years of Federal service and experience to the classroom, imparting his career privacy experience to every student.
Juan
As a Navy veteran, Juan brings both discipline and experience to the classroom. His talents include technical and business training, project management, website development, database programming, audio and video production, and graphic design. Juan had multiple CompTIA and Microsoft certifications and is also an Adobe Certified Educator.
TJ
TJ has been teaching all things Cisco for us for years, and is also CompTIA and CISSP certified. After a decade at JCSE as a Satellite Communications Technician, he retired and moved into DoD contracting before joining Cisco. He is most well-known for successful Collaboration classes with voice and video equipment galore, and often takes time to troubleshoot and maintain our Cisco equipment. At the end of the day he would rather be fishing!
Dr Nikki
Nikki is an experienced Cyber Security Engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the IT and Cyber fields. She is skilled in Statistical Data Analysis, Windows Server, Team Leadership, Penetration Testing, and Risk Management. She is an amazing information technology professional with a Doctorate of Science focused in Cybersecurity from Capitol Technology University.
Staci
Staci is a highly skilled Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with over 20 years’ experience in training individuals at all skill levels. She is also a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and Microsoft Office master Instructor, and Ic3 Internet and Core computer instructor. Staci’s style is not to train “out of the book”, but instead offers individual insights, and augments course materials with her own “tips and tricks” to meet your needs.
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What we offer
Locations
- Fort Walton Beach, FL
- Tampa, FL
- Ponte Vedra Beach, FL
- Montgomery, AL
- San Antonio, TX
- Herndon, VA
- Phone: (800) 674-3550
- Email: info@appliedtechac.com
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