From the Crystal Coast to the Craggy Gardens, I have devoted my 25 year career in education to helping North Carolina students and teachers leverage technology. My Richlands High School students designed one of the earliest school websites, and one of my former McDowell High School students is now the district’s Director of Technology. In 2003, I became the Director of Technology in McDowell County and brought fiber to all buildings, visual literacy to every classroom, wireless connectivity and laid the foundation for one-to-one.These experiences prepared and prompted me to accept a position on the newly formed Connectivity Services team at NCDPI, where I served as a Regional E-rate Specialist, Co-State E-rate Coordinator, and Connectivity Services Manager working to make sure all North Carolina public school students benefited from state and federal investments in scalable bandwidth and network infrastructure. In five-plus years with NCDPI I visited every corner of the state helping district and charter schools successfully navigate the E-rate process.In 2014, I returned to implementing technology at the district level by spearheading an aggressive one-to-one Digital Learning Initiative as Buncombe County Schools Director of Technology. All 23,000 students in Buncombe are one-to-one since 2018 and students without Internet at home have access to a mobile hotspot. Effective communication and collaboration were essential to ensuring the necessary technical and instructional supports were implemented to support our blended learning vision. In 2018 I was recognized with an International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Making IT Happen award and in March 2021 I was recognized as the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction K-12 Technology Director of the Year.On February 1, 2022, I returned to NCDPI, having accepted a position as Director of the Office of Systems Modernization. I look forward to utilizing the knowledge and experience gained over the past 25 years to steward a statewide effort to implement a cohesive, sustainable, securable, and flexible set of modernized business systems designed to best serve a diverse set of K-12 public schools.