HDI’s SupportWorld website is where technical support and service management professionals go throughout the year for tips, best practices, and strategic insights for managing people, process, and technology. Service and support leaders consider us a critical resource for information because we have passionate and dedicated authors who are willing to share their experiences.
For 2020, we’ve assembled a panel of industry experts and practitioners to create the content that you’ve come to depend on. These HDI Featured Contributors are committed to helping technical support and service management professionals like you excel in your job and advance your career.
HDI Featured Contributors are committed to helping technical support and service management professionals like you excel in your job and advance your career.
Without further ado, let’s meet the 2020 HDI Featured Contributors.
Pierre Bernard
Pierre Bernard is currently the Global ITSM Process Manager for IKO Industries. He has 34 years of experience in IT, seven of those as a service desk manager. Pierre has helped numerous organizations and people learn about and understand the world of IT best practices. He has extensive experience, knowledge, and expertise in service management, organizational change, business management, and continual service improvement. Pierre also holds numerous certifications, including ITIL Expert, AGILE Foundation, PRINCE2 Practitioner, Master Trainer/Facilitator, COBIT5, ISO/IEC 20000, and ISO/IEC 27000. For those people who took an ITIL V2 Foundation (English or French) or Service Manager or an ITIL V3 Continual Service Improvement exam, you’ll be happy to know that Pierre is partly to blame. He was an examiner for those certifications. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Ben Brennan
Ben Brennan is the founder of QSTAC, Inc. and the author of Badass IT Support. His irreverent style, sincere passion, and contagious enthusiasm for customer-centric IT has proven a powerful combination. The result has been a decade of awards, accolades, and best-in-industry customer experience benchmarks for his IT teams at Twitter, Box, Yahoo, and most recently Verizon Media, where he was Senior IT Director. Now, with his new company QSTAC, Ben is taking the same proprietary tools and methods that fueled those previous successes and making them available to all, empowering any team to define, measure, and deliver a world-class customer experience. Follow him on Twitter @why.
Chris Chagnon
Chris Chagnon is an ITSM application and web developer who designs, develops, and maintains award-winning experiences for managing and carrying out the ITSM process. Chris has a Master of Science in Information Technology, and a bachelor’s degree in Visual Communications. In addition, Chris is a PhD Candidate studying Information Systems with a focus on user and service experience. As one of HDI’s Top 25 Thought Leaders, Chris speaks nationally about the future of ITSM, practical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning, gamification, continual service improvement, and customer service/experience. Follow Chris on Twitter @Chagn0n.
Phyllis Drucker
Phyllis Drucker is an ITIL® certified consultant and information leader at Linium, a Ness Digital Engineering Company. Phyllis has more than 20 years of experience in the disciplines and frameworks of IT service management, as both a practitioner and consultant. She has served HDI since 1997 and itSMF USA since 2004 in a variety of capacities including speaker, writer, local group leader, board member, and operations director. Since 1997, Phyllis has helped to advance the profession of ITSM leaders and practitioners worldwide by providing her experience and insight on a wide variety of ITSM topics through presentations, whitepapers, and articles and now her new book on the service request catalog, Online Service Management: Creating a Successful Service Request Catalogue (International Best Practice). Follow Phyllis on Twitter @msitsm.
Chris Hanna
Chris Hanna has built and led teams that support the customer experience across a variety of different industries, including a global technical support team. He’s passionate about developing high-potential talent and game-changing cultures, through continuous improvement efforts focused on enhancing both the employee and customer experience. As Founder and Management Coach at Evolving Management, he provides solutions to help leaders and organizations evolve their impact and effectiveness. Connect with Chris on Twitter @EvolvingMgmt, Instagram @evolvingmanagement, LinkedIn, or at [email protected].
Kristin Jones
Kristin Jones is a passionate customer support advocate with a focus on people and process, and has been leading IT teams with delight for more than a decade. A lifelong learner who seeks to inspire others with fresh ideas, she is an active member of the HDI community and holds certifications in ITIL v3., HDI Support Center Manager and KCS Foundations. She strives to end each day having smiled more than frowned and having helped someone (or something!) work better. Follow her on Twitter @kitonjones.
Kevin Kwasiborski
Kevin Kwasiborski is an 18-year IT veteran with more than 15 years’ experience leading teams around IT service and asset management. He has worked in several industries from B2B to healthcare to consumer electronics. His professional passions are people, technology, and learning new things. Kevin focuses on leading by example, being humble, driving a culture of optimism, and inserting crazy wherever possible. Personally, his biggest passion is his family.
Alma Miller
Dr. Alma Miller is an enthusiastic entrepreneur, speaker, and educator with more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Catholic University, a Masters in Electrical Engineering from George Washington University, a Masters in Technical Management from Johns Hopkins University, and a Doctorate in Engineering from George Washington University. Dr. Miller considers herself a relationship counselor between development and IT operations teams. Her consulting company, AC Miller Consulting , provides services to government and commercial clients across multiple industries. Dr. Miller speaks at industry conferences and events and teaches graduate courses for Johns Hopkins and University of California Irvine. Connect with her on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.
Julie L Mohr
Julie is a dynamic, engaging change agent who brings authenticity, integrity, and passion to practitioners worldwide. Through her books, articles, speaking, consulting, and teaching, her purpose is to spark change in the world with thought-provoking dialog and interaction on topics of authentic leadership, business strategy, knowledge management, organizational culture, and innovation. Julie has a B.S. in computer science from The Ohio State University and an MaED from the University of Phoenix and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Management and Organizational Leadership in Information Systems & Technology from the University of Phoenix. She is an ITIL Expert, Certified Help Desk Director, and Certified Governance IT Professional. She is an HDI Business Associate and teaches training and certification classes for service and support professionals. Visit her website, and follow her on Twitter @JulieMohr, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Deborah Monroe
Deborah Monroe is one of eighteen Master EQ practitioners in the world, through the Global EQ Community of 6 Seconds. She's also an associate with the Institute for Organizational Performance and an HDI business associate. Working with all levels of executive leadership, management, and individual contributors, Deborah concentrates on integrating humans and process to create a balanced working environment. Her aim is to build understanding and empathy, creating a positive bottom line through employee and customer retention.
Sanjeev NC
Sanjeev NC is currently a Product Marketing Manager at Freshworks, makers of cloud-based ITSM software. Sanjeev started his career in IT service desk and moved over to process consulting where he led award winning ITSM tool implementations. Sanjeev is passionate about user experience and evangelizes a concept called selfless service as an evolution of self-service. Sanjeev was also a highly commended finalist for Young ITSM Professional of the year in itSMF UK’s annual awards. Sanjeev is currently on a mission to ensure that every customer support interaction yields the best possible experience. Follow him on Twitter @yenceesanjeev.
Ryan Ogilvie
Ryan Ogilvie has been working in the Service Management space since 2006. A keen student of the service management ecosystem, he first started blogging after feeling a responsibility to share what he’d learned to a wider community. While his professional focus is IT Service Management, his experience has taught him that leveraging a variety of frameworks and communication styles will enable your business to meet its business outcomes. Follow him on Twitter @ryanrogilvie.
Adam Rauh
Adam Rauh has been working in IT since 2005. Currently in the business intelligence and analytics space at Tableau, he spent over a decade working in IT operations focusing on ITSM, leadership, and infrastructure support. He is passionate about data analytics, security, and process frameworks and methodologies. He has spoken at, contributed to, or authored articles for a number of conferences, seminars, and user-groups across the US on a variety of subjects related to IT, data analytics, and public policy. He currently lives in Georgia. Connect with Adam on LinkedIn.
Vicki Rogers
Vicki Rogers has more than 20 years of IT experience and is currently the Senior Manager of Change at Georgia Tech Previously, she was a senior IT manager at Amtrak and the service desk manager at the University of West Georgia. She has expertise in service management, change management, leadership development, and diversity in IT. She has been involved in service desk creation, implementation, and adoption of ITSM best practices, as well as insourcing IT. Vicki has a BBA in Business Management, an MBA, and an EdS in Learning, Leadership, and Organizational Development. Her graduate research involved cultivating and developing women leaders in higher education IT divisions. Vicki is a regular national speaker on leadership, service management, diversity,and change. Outside of work and school, Vicki is the mom of two brilliant and successful college girls and one very spoiled schnauzer. Follow Vicki on Twitter @vickirogers.
Jeff Rumburg
Jeff Rumburg is the winner of the 2014 Ron Muns Lifetime Achievement Award, and was named to HDI’s Top 25 Thought Leaders list for 2016. As co-founder and CEO of MetricNet, Jeff has been retained as an IT service and support expert by some of the world’s largest corporations, including American Express, Hewlett Packard, Coca-Cola, and Sony. He was formerly CEO of the Verity Group and Vice President of Gartner. Jeff received his MBA from Harvard University and his MS in Operations Research from Stanford University. Contact Jeff at [email protected] . Follow MetricNet on Twitter @MetricNet.
Richard Sykora
Richard Sykora has more than 25 years’ experience in customer service and call center operations. He has managed both national and global operations and has been a speaker at industry conferences and user groups leading participants in industry best practices. Richard is Senior Manager, Support Operations at Blackbaud, and is Lean Practitioner Certified. He is a volunteer and currently Chair of ReStart Career Development program assisting those in a career transition and helps connect participants’ natural skills to jobs and careers they were built for with purpose. Connect with Richard on LinkedIn.
Doug Tedder
Doug Tedder is the principal of Tedder Consulting, a service management and IT governance consultancy. Doug is a recognized thought leader whose passion is helping and inspiring good IT organizations to become great. Doug is an author, blogger, and frequent speaker and contributor at local industry user group meetings, webinars, and national conventions. Doug holds numerous industry certifications in disciplines ranging from ITIL®, COBIT®, Lean IT, DevOps, KCS™, VeriSM™, and Organizational Change Management. He was recognized as an IT Industry Legend by Cherwell Software in 2016, and is one of HDI’s Top 25 Thought Leaders in Technical Support and Service Management. He is a member and former president of itSMF USA, a member of HDI, a contributing author to VeriSM™, and co-author of the VeriSM™ Pocket Guide. Follow Doug on Twitter @dougtedder or visit his website.
Thomas Wilk
Thomas Wilk is an IT manager at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has become a performance improvement leader, helping employees find their way along their career path. As a mentor to managers, he helps them develop leadership skills so they can better engage with their staff. Tom has a bachelor’s degree in Information Science and is currently working towards a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University in the Public Management program. To see more from Tom, visit his YouTube channel.
Do you have a topic you’d like the featured contributors to cover? Do you have burning questions that need answers? Let us know in the comments!
Amy Eisenberg is the content manager for HDI where she works with industry experts and practitioners to create content for technical support and service management professionals. She has worked in B2B media and scholarly publishing for more than 20 years, developing content for print and digital magazines, print and email newsletters, websites, conferences, and technical seminars. Follow Amy on Twitter @eisenbergamy, and connect with her on LinkedIn.